David Combe, a convert to the Church of Latter-day Saints, sat across the desk from his ward bishop, an unpaid volunteer whose job was to oversee Combe’s spiritual advancement.
Combe, 21, was there to determine his worthiness to go on a mission for the Mormon Church and share the joy he experienced from the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
But first, he had to answer a series of questions:
Had Combe ever touched a girl’s breasts under her clothes? Combe answered truthfully that he had not.
Had he ever touched a girl’s breasts over her clothes?
He had not.
“Then he asked me if I was a fag,” Combe says. “His term.”
At that moment, “I realized I had a same-sex attraction,” or SSA, as the Mormon Church refers to its gay members.
It may seem odd that a young man would not suspect he was gay before the age of 21. Yet bizarre forms of denial abound in the LDS church. Some men go on missions, marry in the Temple, and raise children—only to realize later in life their true gay nature. Others embrace their gay sexuality, but live according to the Mormon “Law of Chastity” and remain celibate. A few try to diminish gay feelings and become heterosexual. Some are disciplined by the church, up to and including excommunication.
Whatever their experience, all have struggled to reconcile their love for their religion with their attraction to men.
Despite his revelation, Combe married in the Mormon Temple, and tried to “manage” his homosexuality. Eventually, he stopped “managing.” He was “disfellowshipped”—a serious form of church discipline just short of excommunication, involving removal of certain privileges such as attending the Temple and participating in sacred rituals.
Combe continued to attend LDS Sunday services, but stopped tithing after church support of anti-gay marriage initiatives in Hawaii. When his bishop confronted him about his donations, he made his decision to leave the church.
“I went home and wrote a letter and asked to have my name removed [from the Mormon church records,]” says Combe, who is now 56 and has been with his partner for more than eight years.
Heterosexual marriage and procreation are central to the Mormon faith. Mormons believe they must marry so that the spirit children of their Heavenly Father and Mother can obtain a physical body, successfully complete an earthly probationary period, and progress in the afterlife to ultimate godhood.
This does not leave much room for same-sex relationships.
Remaining worthy
Older gay Mormons have struggled to live according to Mormon beliefs, sometimes at great personal and psychological costs.
Karl Bennion, 59, married with five children, had his first homosexual relationship at 51. When he kissed a younger man he’d met at his gym, he thought “This is what my marriage should have felt like.” Previously “disfellowshipped” by the church after admitting to a single, same-sex encounter, he has stopped attempting to live according to church dictates.
He is estranged from most of his family; his children return his Christmas gifts. But he has reconciled his spiritual beliefs with his choices, “I know what my relationship is with my Heavenly Father.”
“Scot,” 63, who asked that his real name not be used because he holds a Temple Recommend—a document designating him as “worthy” to enter a Mormon Temple that must be renewed every two years—is married and a father. He moves among the highest ranks of the Mormon Church.
For seven years Scot participated at a senior level in the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a dramatization of the Book of Mormon performed in Palmyra, N.Y. He is also gay.
He remains active in the church and participates in sacred Mormon rituals at the local Mormon Temple.
“I am as out as I can be and stay a member [of the LDS church,]” he says. “People don’t have too much trouble with homosexuality as long as they don’t have to think about it.”
He keeps things “very vague” when talking to church leaders, avoiding any discussion of same-sex activities.
But has he reconciled his LDS beliefs with his sexual orientation?
“Yes and no,” Scot says. “Mormonism is a set of parameters and members should find themselves within those parameters,” he says. He believes he is living within those parameters, including the Law of Chastity.
“I have my own interpretation of it and live within it,” he says.
Excommunication to Affirmation
Younger gay members of the LDS church seem to suffer less, perhaps because of social changes in the wider society and by avoiding heterosexual marriages for which they are ill-suited. They also may have a support system outside the Mormon Church. This makes church discipline, including excommunication, less threatening on a personal level, they say.
George Cole, 28, had been ordained an elder in the Mormon Church at 18 in preparation for his mission. At 20, after completing his mission, he moved to Portland, Ore., participated in LDS church services, and let it be known he was living with his boyfriend.
“The ward bishop left a voicemail for me to come and see him,” Cole says. “He wanted to confirm what he had heard … I said, ‘Yes, I am gay.’”
A disciplinary council was convened. He was excommunicated from the Mormon Church “for conduct unbecoming a member of the church.”
Cole is now the assistant executive director of Affirmation, a support group for Mormons and ex-Mormons who consider themselves gay or who experience SSA.
Interestingly, the Mormon Church counsels against the use of the word “gay” as a noun. The church prefers that affected members think of themselves as struggling with a same-sex attraction—a temptation not unlike other temptations faced by LDS members, such as the temptation to steal.
Some gay Mormons avoid church discipline by adhering to church teachings on chastity, even while embracing their homosexuality.
Slim chance for revelation
The Mormon Law of Chastity, which restricts sexual activity to a lawfully married couple of the opposite sex, provides a “loophole” of sorts for gays wanting to remain in the Mormon Church. However, many hope for a church revelation that would accept same-sex relationships, much as the 1890 revelation to President Wilford Woodford abolished polygamy and the 1978 revelation to Mormon President Spencer C. Kimball allowed men of African descent to attain the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods.
Mormon Bishop David Pruden, executive director of Evergreen, International—an organization to which the LDS church directs members “struggling” with SSA—does not hold out much hope for that wish.
Pruden says marriage is sealed for time and eternity for a man and a woman. Accepting same-sex marriage would “move outside of every foundational concept” of the church. It is “tremendously different than other changes” such as admitting blacks to the priesthood or ordaining women priests, he says.
James Kent, 51, and a “third-generation Mormon” living in Hawaii has no time for Evergreen. He says they believe people are gay because of a weak father or because “they didn’t get enough fresh air.”
“God bless ‘em,” he says. “They really believe it.”
By the seventh grade, Kent had begun to have same-sex dreams. He experienced “horrible, horrible guilt.” He thought, “If I am the best little Mormon boy in the world … God will change me.”
Finding truth
Kent’s own “personal revelation” came after a Gospel Doctrine Class held as part of LDS Sunday services.
He says a “Nazi Mormon” lectured that a person could not enter the celestial kingdom without a wife.
“I knew that was not true,” Kent says. “Joseph Smith saw his brother [Alvin Smith] in heaven and his brother had never married.”
When he got home from that class, Kent had a panic attack. He heard an inner voice say to him, “You’ve had enough, it’s time to go.”
Kent says the Mormon Church has “blood dripping from its hands” and is responsible for the suicides of thousands of LDS members with SSA.
Scot, the self-described “gay Mormon” with friends at the highest levels of church governance, doesn’t think the LDS will accept gays any time soon. He asked a friend in the General Authority—roughly the Mormon equivalent to the Roman Catholic College of Cardinals—to inquire of the Authority on homosexuality. When he followed up to ask why he had not heard back, his friend told him he had been instructed not to respond.
“Ending polygamy was thrust on them,” Jerry says. “Letting blacks into the priesthood was thrust on them.”
It’s different on the issue of homosexuality, because there is insufficient external pressure.
“They won’t even have a meeting on it,” he says.
Click here for more information on Affirmation.
Bruce Carolan is a Visiting Professor at the Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg.
