Coming Out in Mormon Heartland pt. 1 Growing Up

            I must have been fifteen the first time I realized I was gay.

            It was 0-hour seminary, fairly early in the year I think, when Brother Johnson was teaching about Sodom and Gomorrah and the first time the Bible really mentioned homosexuality, the first time this sin was introduced into the world.

            Now … this wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking. I know a lot of gay members have supplied the conversation with all sorts of horror stories specifically about Seminary Teachers horribly scarring them with all sorts of doomsday preaching about gays and the ten plagues or whatnot. That’s not what happened here. This was actually perfectly fine given where the conversation for gays in the church in the early 2010s.

            I remember he framed the conversation actually very sympathetically. The whole bend of his spiel was less to convince his class that homosexuality was of the devil and more to engender sympathy for people who were born with a very specific trial: experiencing attraction toward members of your own gender was some people’s lived reality. And even today, I'm perfectly fine with that presentation. 

But what I actually remember about this conversation was after he proposed this thought, Brother Johnson asked, “How many of you are grateful it’s not yours?” I think he rose his hand purely rhetorically, but a lot of my classmates took it as a cue to signal that this was not their cross, and they all started raising their hands.

            I didn’t know what to do.

            Up until then, I had tried auditioning so many alternate explanations for why I felt nervous talking to a youth leader I thought was striking, or even why I couldn’t help but blush seeing a burly stranger at the community swimming pool. They had almost seemed plausible so long as I didn’t think about them too much.

            And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to raise my hand here, even performatively. The most honest thing I could do here was keep myself busy so I had an excuse to not confirm what was becoming impossible for me to disguise. I think I chose that moment to start filling in my scripture reading chart and waited for the subject to change. All I could think was, Well, I guess it’s mine. This is my reality. Same-gender attraction is my reality.

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018)

            That was almost half a lifetime ago for me, and the way I relate to my experiences with same-gender attraction has … the word I want to use is “evolved,” but that feels a little too linear. A little too pretty. It brings to mind that graphic from biology class with the monkeys progressing into neanderthals and then into humans, all facing the same direction like they are all walking uniformly toward a shared destination, and that’s just not an image I can relate to. If you want to imagine a few of the monkeys on that diagram doing summersaults, maybe one or two passed out on the floor getting drunk off kool-aid, and another standing on his head, then … yes, I could say my feelings about living with same-gender attraction and my knowledge of gospel truths has “evolved.”

            I didn’t think, for example, that I would ever be the kind of person who would ever be comfortable sharing my story living in The Church with same-gender attraction. But that’s the position I find myself in now, writing about how I have found peace and grace as a person experiencing same-gender attraction living within the teachings of the restored gospel.

            This is also my reality, and it's what I'd like to talk about today.

My story has been informed by a lot of sources. I have had the opportunity to interact with many queer members, especially within The Church. Some knew that I also experienced same-gender attraction, some did not. Some were choosing to live within The Church’s teachings, some were not. Some believed in the truthfulness of its teachings but doubted their capacity to live within them, some outright resented The Church’s teachings on marriage and family. Everything I'm sharing, I'm sharing acknowledging the variety of stories that exist even within my specific slice of human experience. 

I recognize that many people who share my situation have not had as clean of experiences as I did. They will share stories of heartache, betrayal, and marginalization. My intention here is not to talk over or invalidate these accounts. I don’t pretend to have the market cornered on gay Mormon experiences. I believe it aligns with Christlike living to learn how to be better at listening to the grievances expressed by members of the LGBT community, including those who do not live covenant lives. At the end of the day, the only story I can speak for is my own, and that’s all I’m going to do. 

But feeling that my kind of narrative is still severely underrepresented in the larger culture, I want to take a little time to share what it was like for me to learn to be comfortable in my skin as a person living with same-gender attraction while also living within the prophetic teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and coming to these conclusions in the epicenter of “Mormon Country” Utah Valley, the last place the world generally expects this kind of thing to happen in.

I also feel special motivation to protect the identities of the players of my stories. You’ll have to accept a level of vagueness in my descriptions, including changing some names, but also know that these are all based on real, specific people.

I'm also writing primarily for an audience of either members or people who are least familiar with the spiritual and cultural behaviors of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints--people who'd know what a Stake Center is. So, I apologize to any potential readers who don't come with that knowledge preloaded. You're welcome to read along just the same, just know you might need like a glossary or something to know exactly what I'm talking about in certain spaces. 

And also because I am a film student who spends way too much time watching movies, I'm going to tell that story with a lot of help from some of my favorite films. 

            I’ll share my story more or less chronologically, divided into four main chapters, starting from my time growing up as a kid in Utah Valley.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)

I might as well start off by acknowledging … I always had a rich awareness of God’s love for me. I can only really guess at why, but I often think it had something to do with the fact that I would often get to walk through many unique spaces in which I did not feel welcomed or even valued. And so I was always keenly aware of the difference in how I felt when I allowed myself to be close to God.

I can recognize as a kid that I had an uncommon capacity for spiritual experiences. I don’t want to aggrandize myself too much in saying this. I wasn’t twelve-year-old Jesus preaching to the scholars in the temple. Nor was I without my foibles or limitations. But as I grow older and my vocabulary for spiritual discernment has deepened, I have only grown more aware of experiences and impressions I was having at young ages that I would now call spiritual or divine. This would end up being more than salvific for me, because the world at large would not be so happy to receive me.

I’ve heard lots of accounts—some firsthand, some secondhand—about the temperament in Utah county specifically lending itself to an environment that is actively hostile toward people who are LGBT. That’s not something I can speak to myself. That wasn’t a thing I personally experienced in Utah valley. I don't necessarily point to that as the major cross I was called to carry. 

Most of my memories of growing up about twenty minutes away from BYU where my dad worked, they have been happy memories. I don’t imagine for a moment that this means this kind of targeted harassment does not happen in communities with or without prominent Mormon influence, but it is part of my lived reality that I didn’t feel any more vulnerable as a gay kid living with like eight LDS temples in an hour radius.

There are possibly special circumstances in my story that safeguarded me. I had a sister two years older than me who had a lot of social clout, and that afforded me some protection. And even when she was ahead of me in schools, I also had a friend, a neighbor with whom I was very close, who held a similar position in the hierarchy. Once people caught wind of these relationships, my classmates also caught onto the idea that if they were harassing or ostracizing me, it would eventually get back to them, and they would stand to lose some grace.

But this was not comprehensive protection. I still struggled quite a bit with bullying growing up. Part of what made me a natural target was that I had a natural softness to me. I wasn’t naturally drawn to a lot of the things that boys my age were. Neither did I have the same temperament as many of my peers. This made certain spaces that thrived on competitiveness (sports, mostly) very unpleasant. And more to the point, it signaled to a lot of people that I was a safe outlet—I could be trusted to never bite back. I see this kind of thing as less about Mormon influence making things hard for the gays and more about ... it's just not easy having a soft heart in a callous world. 

Was this softness an emblem of my latent same-sex attraction? I don’t know. Many members of the queer community will say that they were aware of the way they experienced attraction from a very young age. (Others will say it developed much later. It really is unique to each person.) I personally don’t know how I would classify my situation. Hindsight can make certain things feel inevitable, predestined. Perhaps this was the forecast of what would become my same-sex attraction. Perhaps the seed was nurtured in such a specific way that attraction was allowed to blossom. I honestly don’t know.

The Jungle Book (1967) Spend enough time as a Mowgli, and you learn how to be a Baloo eventually

I have never been ashamed of this softer part of me. It’s not as though my unique station hasn’t given me special windows or offered me special opportunities. In recent years as I’ve become an uncle, I have appreciated how this has given me close proximity to my young niece and nephews and enabled me to be a welcome, active agent in their lives. Just the same, I have long been aware of the many ways in which I was penalized for carrying that softness. It didn’t help that I didn’t have great intuition for situations that were emotionally dangerous for me.

Now might also be a good time to put out there … when you don’t experience attraction the way your peers do, there are ripple effects that shape how you interact socially. I didn’t, for example, understand “dirty jokes,” or heck, even basic innuendos. How could I? My reference points were very different from those of my peers. The things that made the boys in my grade blush or snicker did not even catch my attention, and so I lacked that shared language.

Moreover, many of the meeting grounds in which this dialect was rehearsed—PE locker rooms, mostly—were not what I would call “safe spaces.” Lots of scrawny fourteen-year-old boys were convinced this queer kid would like nothing more than to watch them change into their PE clothes. Accidentally making eye contact with the wrong person at the wrong time could spur disaster, humiliation. I learned eventually to keep my passage through these spaces short, and always with my head down. I have to believe that there are some gay kids who manage to manage to mimic locker room talk, some might even see it as a necessity to maintain their cover, but I was not so clever, and I was penalized for my lack of education. 

I remember, for example, in my advisory period in 8^th grade when one of the 9^th grade girls made a comment about one of the 9^th grade boys--one of the jocks who never really had to worry about finding himself on the wrong end of the social ladder--having a “queer” haircut. Everyone in the room found that description hilarious, such that everyone started finding creative applications for the word.

Now … my context for the word mostly came from reading The Boxcar Children in third grade and remembering reading about the children hearing “a queer noise in the night.” So … she was obviously using a generic term to say his haircut was unusual and/or frightening.

And so when I chimed in about one of the teachers seeming awfully queer today, I was met with laughter, alright, but the wrong kind. I learned a few dire lessons that day. 

This particular event happened right around the time when I was starting to reckon with my capacity for same-sex attraction. “Queerness.” It would be a few years more before I would really allow myself to connect the dots, but episodes like these built a lot of trauma around the emerging awareness that the fascinations I was starting to have for men could potentially be described as “romantic.”

Magnum PI (1980) Magnum was ridiculously good looking, but more importantly, he was principled in his actions, protective of the people he cared about, and above all, super approachable. He was unquestionably masculine, but his representation of manhood was all about putting everyone at ease. Making everyone feel safe.
This show would have given 13-year-old Zach a heart attack.

And I’m saying “men” instead of “boys” or “guys” very specifically. I didn’t, for example, have to deal with crushing on schoolmates or boys in my quorum, but infatuation just spilled out of me when it came to men in positions of authority. Teachers and youth leaders, basically. I don’t know if thirteen-year-old Zach knew how to “lust” after anyone. But I knew I wanted their attention. I wanted their approval. These were prizes to my mind.

These were also, in my mind, dangerous attractions, a thought reinforced on multiple fronts. Even before I had specific vocabulary for things like grooming or abuse, I was always aware that I was attracted to people who had the capacity take advantage of me.

But before we proceed, know that for whatever contrivance of fate, I was fortunate enough to never be put in such positions, nor has adult hindsight recast certain situations which seemed benign at the time but proved predatory. I actually spent a season of my post-graduate life working with at-risk kids, many of whom had been abused by adults in positions of authority, and I don’t recognize myself in any of their stories.

Honestly, my intense fear of closeness may have acted as a shield from situations in which I might have been vulnerable. And the twisted gratitude I have for that marks only the surface of the convoluted relationship I have with affection. 

Whenever I am in a position to explain to someone what it’s like living with same-gender attraction, I describe it like the experience of, say, going out to get the mail during the global shutdown of 2020 and seeing someone you know across the street walking their dog and wanting to say hello, but not knowing how close they’re comfortable with you getting. 

A Quiet Place (2018)

    And so you’re left with little option but to just politely wave from across the street and go on your merry way. No matter how badly you want to cross the street, there’s a real chance that even the slightest bid for interaction will be read as a boundary-breach, a violation. And more essentially, you're figuring this all out without a script or a sounding board. A lot of your hypotheses get only a single test, and the results of these experiments can be humiliating. 

There are a lot of people on whom I could anchor this discussion, but today I’ll focus on my relationship with one person. For the intents of this piece, I’ll call him JOE. 

JOE had temporarily occupied a position in which he was a person of authority for adolescent Zach, but I felt comfortable around him, so I would make regular visits with him even years after he no longer occupied that position. We were just two folks pegged at different points on the age line who felt very comfortable talking with each other. Always during business hours. Always with open doors. Always with other adults in proximity. 

He certainly wasn’t the only man who caught my attention in this way, but he was unique in the kind of attention he gave me. Where others saw Zach in all his softness and treated him like glass, JOE made me feel truly comfortable in my skin. Most everyone else made me feel like I was being baby-sat. JOE made me feel taken care of.

Again, I was a sophomore in high school before I had really started to reckon with the fact that I was “gay.” It would be a couple of years into this friendship that I even really understood my capacity for same-sex attraction—that the feelings I had for JOE, and others like him, could be accurately described as romantic. It wasn’t a conclusion I was rushing into. That opened up too many Pandora’s boxes for me.

It was precisely because I felt so safe with him that I was able to feel the kind of affection that frightened me. But to this day, I honestly don’t think that if the relationship had continued, we would have ever transgressed.

To offer a proper frame of reference … I never hugged this man, we never said “I love you.” I don’t think this guy even knew my birthday. But JOE was the first person who really showed me what it felt like to be at home with someone else.

Captains Courageous (1937) One of those instances where the movie actually is better than the book, largely because of Spencer Tracey

He is also a pillar of the story of my same-sex attraction for other reasons. I met up with him Christmas of my senior year during a time when I felt particularly discouraged about my future. I unloaded a lot of my anxieties with him, particularly as it pertained to my parents, with whom I felt a great deal of distance at this time.

I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting when I shared my situation with him, but seeing me in my weakness, JOE offered to pray for me to find peace. I didn’t dream that this would have any realtime influence on my circumstances, but to say that I appreciated this gesture would be like saying firefighters appreciate a well-timed rainstorm.

Even so, divine intervention is the only satisfying way of explaining what happened next. It was, after all, during that Christmas break, that I would tell my parents that I was gay.

            And that really was the start of it—the start of me becoming conversational about the most shameful part of myself. JOE never knew about that episode or his place in mending my story like this. I was planning on telling him, but I would not get the chance.

One year later, I tried making some kind of appointment with him my first Christmas break back at home after going off to college—this episode transpired one year after he had told me that he would pray for me. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make ends meet. I sent him an email instead, letting him know specifically that I was grateful for his friendship, and that I was specifically grateful for how he had come through with me the last year, and that I hoped to see him again soon.

I came back to see that JOE emailed me back (what a pleasant surprise!) letting me know that he was grateful I was in a better place and that he was proud of how far I had come.

What’s more, as a demonstration of his faith in me, he was ready to cut ties with me completely …

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

           It’s not that I never thought this could happen, I had just sort of resigned it to the bank of outlandish hypotheticals. “JOE figures out you’re crushing on him and cuts you off,” landed right next to “escaped rhino stampedes through the backyard and mows you over” or “accidentally brought a bomb to the airport.” These were things I had told myself I didn’t need to fixate on. Yet here it was at the top of my inbox.

            I told myself I’d need a day or so to parse through all this and figure out how a person was supposed to maneuver through this.

            And so I came back the next day ready to unscramble all that … only to find that this chain had another message. I perused through it quickly at first trying to scan for an apology. A retraction. Something that would sweep away all the panic I’d been loaded with the day before. I was not so lucky.

            MRS. JOE had joined the conversation. Collectively, they had decided to let me know that they had been discussing me and the best ways to help me become independent. Their conclusion was that it was in my best interest that I discontinue seeing JOE, and in lieu of our visitations, I ought to seek out a professional therapist to treat some very real issues that they were observing.

            You know how everyone’s worst fear growing up is always that people are talking about you behind your back? That they’re all saying how you’re crazy and just killing time until they have an opening to drop you? And you know how everyone tells you that’s just not true?

    Well, I guess they can’t be right all the time. 

I, Tonya (2017)

           Even though there was an obvious finality to their response, I didn’t take that direction lying down. I would spend the next year or so reaching out to him, asking him if he’d reconsider.

            I would later come to decide that, for a person whose default was always the path of least resistance, this would be one of the rare times in my life where I actually chose to do the hard thing over the easy thing. This would be one of the few times I ever spoke up for myself.

Whenever I’ve tried explaining this story to someone, they usually offer the helpful suggestion that maybe next time (NEXT time?), perhaps I ought to just cut my losses and pull back and not risk an unfavorable outcome. That’s normally how I’d go about this kind of thing. But that wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be a person who let a friendship go at the first sign of trouble. Especially not this friendship.

And so I told myself that this was all just a gross misunderstanding. These were not bad people, I had not made a mistake, this was all just an unfortunate wrinkle of circumstance, a miscommunication with all the good humor of like a mid-tier Full House episode. And I was just one well-worded email away from correcting this flaw and finding out that I wasn’t a bad person for having fostered a friendship with this man.

            I made about two or three bids for communication over the next year. And I am the kind of person who, if I hadn’t eventually gotten a response, would have continued. Whether he opened up or whether he doubled down, those were both “answers.” One was definitely more preferable than the other. But they were answers. I could live the verdict as long as I received a verdict. But silence? That wasn’t an answer.  

    I eventually got my wish, and everything that went with it.

The Iron Giant (1999)

            February 10, 2016, I received a message from his email.

            “Hello Zachary, this is Mrs. JOE.

            “STOP EMAILING MY HUSBAND!!!!

            “This is your final and only warning from me.”

Those embers of doubt, that this was all just a benign difference of opinion, were smothered in Mrs. JOE’s response. 

            This hurt worst of all because I felt like I was bearing the punishment for sins I had not committed. This man and I had not transgressed, “nor anything like unto it.” (DC 59: 6) To this day, I have never kissed a man. Never asked to hold his hand. The only thing I really got from JOE was recognition and validation. And for that, I had apparently condemned us both. Only JOE had a way out, he just had to eject me from his life. And when I wouldn’t let him make a clean exit, he just had to sic his wife on me.

            This scenario really only offered one verdict: it wasn’t enough just to never break the law of chastity, I was held accountable for hypothetical transgressions. I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want to put anyone else in such a position. And the only way to be certain no one ever would was to keep myself emotionally sterile.

Passengers (2016) A man makes an impossible choice to end his solitude by willingly inviting another person onto his desert island. The very act of connection, even at its most basic level, is inherently tied to the violation of another person. Seeing cinema royalty and beacon of masculinity, Chris Pratt, basically sell his soul for a hug spoke to me in a way no other film has, including those with overt gay themes.

Critics reviled this film for having audiences sympathize with a monster who would do something so selfish and unforgivable. I would see many voices declaring that if this guy found himself in this situation, he should have just done the responsible thing and let himself be sucked out into space …

            This is usually the part of the story where prospecting allies will express their sympathies: “I’m so sorry about all that you had to go through. You stalwart trooper. It couldn’t have been easy growing up gay in conservative Utah Valley.”

            And this is where I usually have to ask them to sit down and find the nicest way to tell them … liberals were not any nicer to me.

            In a lot of ways, they were actually way worse.    

    To Be Continued ...