No More Of This!

I am sad and angry this morning at the news that Todd Ransom has taken his own life. Another promising young man who apparently crumbled in the face of the homophobia and hopelessness that the Mormon Church seems unable to avoid forcing on its gay members.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The rhetoric from Salt Lake about love and acceptance is either not getting through to the rank and file or else it's a sham. I hear it but it doesn't match the reality. And the reality is that the LDS Church's inability to figure out this issue is costing lives. It pressures its gay members to sacrifice all hope of the happiness it urges everyone else to seek and devotes all its resources to. But not for God's gay children. For some reason the Church can't explain (they try, but it's insufficient guesswork), gay people must deny themselves all love, intimacy, and the greatest joys of human existence just because of who they are, not because of what they do, or else (in the Church's opinion) face severe eternal consequences. And if they are honest about who they are, they face social ostracism, exile, bigotry, hate, and worst of all, pity. Well-meaning but clueless straight Mormons chant a chorus of "love the sinner but hate the sin" and have no idea how patronizing they sound, with the result--as demonstrated by Todd--of increasing the hopelessness.

Sorry, that's not good enough. The low priority inconsistent messaging from church HQ continues to allow a culture of soft (and sometimes overt) bigotry to flourish as if it were God's will, with lives like Todd Ransom's as ongoing collateral damage. It is wrong, wrong, wrong. Surely the Savior weeps with Todd's family and friends today as He contemplates what drove Todd to such utter despair. Surely the "Saints" of the Mormon Church should hide their heads in shame that their church and their attitudes have produced yet another such tragedy. What will it take for the suicides to stop?