Shredded

Well, my fears weren't justified after all. It was far worse than I imagined.

Recently my father tearfully begged me not to come out to anyone else in the family, especially the one sister I hadn't yet spoken with. "Family cohesion" was at stake, he said. Out of respect for him and his opinion, I agreed to defer, though this was against my own better judgment. I warned him that if she found out some other way, she would be even angrier than if I'd told her personally. It wouldn't be hard to discern this from my Facebook page, I told him, and she's the type who would actually read at that level of detail and figure it out. Then you'd better take all that stuff off your Facebook page, he said. And that I wasn't going to do, because it would have meant basically dismantling the whole page, un-friending dozens of people I care a lot about. I'm done with the fear-filled self-censorship.

And guess what. Sure enough, she did exactly as I predicted. Yesterday she called, I couldn't pick up. This afternoon I called her back.

I couldn't possibly recreate here the hour-long torrent of anger that gushed through that phone at me. It was a fire hydrant on full blast. I knew she would have a difficult time but I had no idea it would be this bad. Condensed version as follows, quoting her.

"I am so angry with you that I'm shaking [and I could hear it in her voice]. How dare you? You have stabbed me in the back by making me the last to know. You should never have said anything to anyone about this and I wish you never had. You are tearing this family apart with your selfish publicizing of this thing. This is not about you. You have betrayed my trust. You have become an activist for immorality with your pro-gay posts on Facebook and you are going down a sinful path that will take you right out of the Church. I can't imagine what your mother would think of what you're doing if she were still alive. I think homosexuality is disgusting, and don't preach to me what President Hinckley said about accepting gay people in the Church, I could preach right back to you. Your support for so-called same-sex marriage is wrong, it is apostate. Go ahead and call me an ignorant homophobe if you want, but I refuse to listen to anything you say, I will not read anything you send me, I will not entertain any attempt by you to twist the Scriptures or the words of the prophets to justify your immoral lifestyle choices."

There were many variations of course but these were the central themes, and many of them were almost verbatim from my dad so I'm confident they have talked. I didn't try to argue with her; it was clear that logic or reason wasn't going to penetrate such vehement hostility. I stayed calm, and let her talk as much as she wanted. I told her I was very sad that a sister I cared so much about would refuse to listen and seemed to be afraid to learn something new. But nothing I said seemed to make any difference. This was raw, powerful rage in full force. Like a flash flood, the only thing I could do was get out of its way. So I ended the call as calmly as I began it, by saying how sad I was to have heard all this, and that she should let me know when she was ready to talk again.

If she were here, and calm, and willing to engage in rational discourse after all these negative emotions were spent, I would ask some simple questions, as follows.

1. Why is it selfish of me to want to share this sensitive, vulnerable part of my heart with the family I should be able to rely on for unconditional love and understanding?

2. You built your life around the spouse you love, your kids, and all that has flowed from that. Your entire life centers on that relationship. You refer to it, think about it all day, every day. You talk about it constantly to others. Why is it fair for you to angrily insist that I never speak of my own life in the same terms, of my own aspirations to find someone to love and build a life with exactly as you have, just because you get icky feelings when you imagine what we might do behind closed doors? Are you truly incapable of understanding that it's not about sex, it's about love and connection and companionship for me just as much as it is for you? Is my heart not entitled to the same love and happiness you take for granted? Why do you think you have the right to try to prevent that?

3. Why is it okay for you to furiously accuse me of propagandizing activism and promotion of "the gay lifestyle" just because you notice that some of my Facebook friends are gay, and then to demand that I go back into the closet when I finally object to the years of my own family's homophobic jokes and cheap shots at fags who are allegedly out to destroy the family and civilization?


4. Why do you insist that it's only about your comfort and avoidance of what you think is a difficult subject, while you ignore my suffering for years in silence at bigoted, homophobic mockery by my own family and the church they raised me in?

5. Do you think I enjoy all this drama and rejection? Can you possibly believe I'd willingly subject myself to this kind of ostracism by my own family just because I think it's fun to go through this?

6. Why won't you just listen to me, please?

It's one thing to have your heart broken in a romantic relationship. It's quite another to have it broken by family members you've loved all your life and relied on for support and understanding no matter what, only to discover that their love is actually conditional. I never thought this would happen to me. But I guess I am loved and accepted within my own family only as long as I toe the official Mormon line. Isn't it sad that this family-focused, family-centered, family-obsessed church creates a culture in which so many families are so willing to angrily evict some of their own for simply talking about things that make the others uncomfortable. The only thing I can do now is just back off and give them all time to calm down and perhaps come to their senses. Fortunately my kids are solidly with me and we are a happy family ourselves. The rest will just have to get on without us for a while until they are ready to re-engage on a more civil basis. Today was not the time to say such things, but at some point I will tell them the kind of words and treatment and assumptions I'm no longer going to accept.

I'm feeling very beat up tonight. Very sad, very abandoned. Thanks to those of you who've shared your time on the phone with me today, I can't tell you how much it's meant just to be able to talk about all this with you. I guess that's why we call ourselves family, because we're there for each other when our natural families--who should be--aren't. Even with all this dreck to wade through, I'm still very blessed in so many ways, and I will never go back into the closet though the entire extended family may fume and rage and try to push me there. If they want me to remain in the group, they're just going to have to learn to deal, and to give me some respect. Because I won't sacrifice my integrity for anyone's temporary comfort.

I'm sure the soap opera isn't over.