In this post at the Juvenile Instructor, I shared some of the spiritual prompting I felt I had in grad school, but a really big one was the persistent prompting I felt to vote no on Proposition 8 in 2007.
Throughout that year, 2007, I had this nagging spiritual feeling: “You need to understand the issue of homosexuality better than you do.” I guess nowadays we’d call that LGBT+ issues, but the prompting was something like that.
I’d always seen myself as wanting to be kind to gay people and figured that such people didn’t simply choose their orientation (I was very attracted to women, which wasn’t a choice). And yet, prior to 2007 gay marriage/sex seemed unquestionably beyond the pale. So I figured the right answer was we should be good and kind to gay people, not demonize or ridicule them, but the trend at that time of pushing for legalizing gay marriage seemed problematic.
So when the prompting kept coming, I kept thinking, “What more do I need to understand? Don’t I have the ‘right’ answer?”
I used to go through the book reviews in the Mormon journals, and going through Dialogue that year, I came across a review for In Quiet Desperation, a book published in 2004 by Deseret Book that focused on helping church members understand the struggles gay members were going through. I felt like I should buy it and though I felt a bit uncomfortable doing so in the BYU bookstore, that’s where I got it.
It felt too painful to read the Mattis’s story, the parents of the gay member who shot himself on the doorstep of the stake center, so I read Ty Mansfield’s part instead. I don’t want to try to go through all the thoughts I had as I read it (many many) but I started changing my views as I did so. Reading Mansfield really hit me of what a struggle gay members were having, so much harder than me as a straight member.
At this time, there was a push for Proposition 8 in California that the church strongly backed. We heard about it a lot at church and by that summer, we were being encouraged to encourage other members to promote it, including our home teaching families.
I felt very uncomfortable about the whole thing. Whenever the topic came up, I felt really bad. There was a whole lot of discussion of the topic and I started feeling really confused. I wanted to listen to good members of the ward I trusted who were promoting prop 8, but I didn’t find their arguments convincing. We lived in a pretty liberal place, so there were lots of advertisements for voting no all around us.
One day, not long before the November election, our son who was about 8 asked about the topic with genuine curiosity. I can’t remember his exact words, but he asked something along the lines of “what’s the right answer?” (neighbor friends were against it.). I looked at him and simply said, “I don’t know,” which was probably atypical for Mormon dads.
I worried I might be being swayed by the opinions of “the world” and worried that my discomfort might be due to not wanting to be disliked by our more liberal friends. I felt that I couldn’t just dodge this but needed to figure out what to do.
Again, I won’t do into all the details, but I well remember the setting. Sitting on a bale of hay why my kids and their friends went though some sort of pumpkin maze at the end of October. It was then where I felt I got the clear answer that God wanted me to vote no on Proposition 8. A prompting that came after a long process of following other promptings, study, pondering, and prayer.
I REALLY remember staring at the Proposition 8 question in the voting booth and thinking, “What’s it going to be, Steve? President Monson said vote yes, but the Spirit told me to vote no.”
I voted no, but had a LOT of questions and spent a lot of time trying to do research the next week. At that time, I got more involved in the Bloggernacle and felt the prompting of “just listen” to the people who felt very hurt by Prop 8 passing.
Since then, the church leaders endorsed the “Respect for Marriage Act” supporting gay marriage with protections for religious groups who don’t want to be forced to accept it in their institutions. I did see some conservative members expressing unhappiness over that position, but it also made me think my Prop 8 vote had become less unorthodox with the church backing that bill.
I’m certainly unorthodox in many other ways, and my experience with Proposition 8 makes me feel okay about that.
Comments
20 responses to “Differing from Church Leaders: A Personal Experience”
I am very glad that the Church never told me to vote against Danica Roem.
Stephen, thanks for sharing—I think discovering elements of our own spirituality apart from institutional pressures is one of the most significant forms of spiritual maturity we can experience.
Stephen – many thx for sharing this incident. We here in Utah were unaware of the LDS Church’s role in the Prop 8 matter. At least I was, until I attended another Sac mtg being held in our multi-ward bldg, and the bishop of that ward read to the congregation a letter from some higher authority (I don’t remember which level he said had sent it) urging the members to donate time, money, and effort toward insuring the passage of Prop 8 in California. My first thought was: that’s a California issue, so it shouldn’t affect me. But almost instantly, my second thought was: wait a minute, that doesn’t sound right . . From listening to NPR and reading national newspapers, I had already concluded that Prop 8 shouldn’t be passed, so that is probably why I was instantly disheartened by the church’s support, but I had the distinct feeling that I and “church policy” were not on the same page.
BTW, no other church group that I am aware of in this area received the “official” letter that I heard. I decided that the bishop must have received it from somebody in California, and decided on his own authority to read it in his Utah group.
Indeed, Lemming. Thanks Kendall! That’s interesting about the letter, Raymond. I can’t remember all the details, but we got a whole lot of leadership instruction on the topic.
I also just want to clarify that I don’t post this as a rejection or even criticism of our leaders, but more of a larger theme I want to address in coming posts of the fact that I see our leaders in a different paradigm than we (and they) often present. I see our leaders more as caretakers of the church and its doctrines than the “mouthpiece of God” as we often talk about them.
For the “caretaker model” I appreciate our leaders’ commitment and oversight of the church and am okay with disagreeing sometimes, and I’m okay with all of us, leaders included, learning and growing through trial and error. Not everything they say or policy they implement has to be perfect or directly from God’s mouth.
A way that I look at things is to ask myself, “What does God want from the church?” and “What does God want from me as a church member?” And these questions lead me to a re-framing: “Does God want a church where every member awaits instructions from a priesthood leader, and then follows those instructions?” The answer to me is obviously a decided NO. No, it seems to me that God wants individual members to think and act independently, self-propelled in righteousness, so to speak, and that church leaders (and other members) give helpful advice to each other but not commandment.
D&C 121 speaks to this. Nothing in the priesthood should be done by dominion or compulsion — surely, relying on higher office and the revelation associated with that higher office as authority for commanding the actions or thoughts of others would be dominion or compulsion. Rather, everything in the priesthood is done by persuasion, brotherly love, kindness, patience, and so forth. There can be no decree by fiat or claiming the imprimatur of revelation — even when revelation has been received, and we rejoice when it has, it cannot be imposed on others by dominion or compulsion with the authority of office; rather, it can only be shared by persuasion, brotherly love, kindness, patience, and so forth. The idea of common consent is important to our God.
To me, God wants a church where men of the priesthood are self-propelled and independent. Church leaders and other members teach each other correct principles, as best they understand them, and encourage each other, and sustain each other as they govern themselves. We are all sojourners in the land. Sustaining isn’t just an uphill exercise [underlings sustain the decisions of their leaders] — it is also downhill [leaders sustain the independence and autonomy and dignity of their underlings] and sideways [everyone sustains the independence of everyone else].
To me, speakers in general conference do not “channel” the Lord — rather, they do their best to offer something from their own experience and learning that might be helpful to fellow members. Members have a responsibility to stand independently in their own agency. I believe this is what God really wants. Doesn’t the notion of home-centered and church-supported fit well with this? Doesn’t this fit with D&C 50:22 and D&C 1:20?
May our God continue to bless us, as a church and as individuals.
Coming from someone who was coming of age and never heard about the whole Prop 8 controversy until my service mission, I personally never agreed with that amendment. I always thought that the church could use other means to protect their 1st Amendment rights and protect itself from legal liability without forbidding gay couples to enjoy the monetary benefits and other goods that come from marriage.
Sure what these couples were doing is a sin against their Creator. Sure there was the concern about kids being taught ideological things behind the backs of their parents, which I strongly oppose. But the way I see it, I think individuals themselves should be the arbiters on whether or not homosexual relationships are a sin or not. I personally think that it should be the individual who should decide whether or not homosexual relationships are good or bad, not the government.
Don’t get me wrong. I strongly defend the church’s doctrine on marriage and will strongly resist anyone’s attempts to alter it, especially given what the Bible says on such matters. I just merely think that Christians who promote the Biblical definition of marriage and those who promote homosexuality can coexist in peace in our society and that neither side has to compromise on their personal values. Those of us who prefer to live as God commands us to live will go our way and continue promoting the Gospel while those who have no desire to give up homosexual relationships can have their relationships and their dignity in peace. It might not please either side of the political spectrum, but as long as my church is free to operate as it so chooses free from government interference, I generally don’t care what people do in terms of sexual relationships.
I was in CA for prop 8. I’d been struggling with the role of the lgbt community since the prior prop 22. I kept my head above water until one Sunday our stake pres came to our ward and spent sac meeting hard selling our ward on donating and volunteering. That was hard but what broke me was when he said, ‘if you don’t work to support prop 8, then you don’t really believe pres. Monson is a prophet of God.’
He backed me against a wall and forced me to choose between my own promptings/revelations and the church. It took me 10 years to work through it to a place a peace.
He’s now a general authority so I guess from the church’s perspective what he did would be considered being a good leader. This wasn’t a lone incident of how he thought, approached his role in the church. Interestingly, a large percentage of the super active families in that ward left the church between then and now.
If what he said was hard on me, i can’t imagine how the secret lgbt members in the ward/stake felt.
I honestly don’t know if the Church supporting Prop 8 was a mistake, or if circumstances have changed enough that supporting it was the right thing to do then and supporting the Respect for Marriage Act is the right thing to do now. Both seem possible to me. I confess I’m glad I didn’t live in California at the time.
I think Church leaders are in the same boat as the rest of us: sometimes the Lord tells them what to do by revelation, sometimes they do their best on their own and it turns out okay, and sometimes they make mistakes–even when they think they’re being told what to do by revelation. That said, I’m confident the Lord generally calls the people he does because they’re less likely to make mistakes and have experience that makes doing their best on their own more likely to succeed. (As I’ve said before, I don’t think it’s a coincidence we had the first doctor-prophet of our dispensation during the pandemic. But that implies that prophets aren’t puppets, or President Nelson’s medical expertise wouldn’t have mattered.) They also have the advantage of counsellors and councils to help them avoid errors.
I can’t quite agree with describing them as mere “caretakers” though. When the Lord wants to tell the Church something, he reveals it to the leaders of the Church. So yes, they make mistakes, and yes, you can disagree with them. But keep in mind that at any given moment they may well be speaking for God.
Of all the things the church has done over the last couple decades, including many things it has changed which a person might disagree with either before or after the change (or both), why does the concern which this post uses to flesh out the concept come from the same small set that seemingly every blog writer who disagrees with the church gives primary focus?
ji, it sounds to me like you and I have a lot of similar ideas about church leadership, though I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
Matthew, that sounds like a useful position to take, but leaders and members spoke rather differently about that issue at the time of prop 8.
anon, I can appreciate your concern having gone through the episode. I think I’ll post more about it.
RLD, your statement “I think Church leaders are in the same boat as the rest of us” is kind of my position too. I believe in revelation, I think our leaders get it in difficult ways like you say, I think others can get it too, but as I’ve noted in these posts, I think revelation can be confusing for all of us. And for me, these claims (along with a number of other issues in church history) point me to believing in a caretaker model. I’ll post more about that if that’s okay with my fellow bloggers here.
John, this was me sharing my own experience. As I said to RLD, I have more to say on the topic of church leaders’ and members’ revelation.
Stephen,
Your mention of a caretaker model brings three thoughts to mind.
(1) In an interview (60 Minutes? Larry King?), President Hinckley was asked about how revelation works — he spoke of Joseph Smith as the prophet of this dispensation, and how current leaders rely on his revelations, the scriptures, and prayer. His answer was an honest answer — I think church members pooh-poohed it because he was speaking to a non-member, but I do think his answer was an honest answer.
(2) The Lord provides a parable in D&C 88 which supports (1) above and which supports a caretaker model.
(3) Elder Stephen L. Richards of the Twelve gave a talk in 1932 entitled Bringing Humanity to the Gospel that might be interesting to you — here is an extract of three consecutive paragraphs:
“The Church believes in new and continuous revelation, and ever holds itself in readiness to receive messages from the Lord. To that end the people sustain the President in particular, and others of the General Authorities, as the media through which God’s word may be delivered. A revelation to our living president would be as readily accepted and become as much a part of our scripture as the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph.
“In the absence of direct communication from heaven, however, the Church and its people must be guided by the revelations already given and the wisdom and inspiration of its leadership. I have great confidence in the wisdom of the presiding authorities in all departments of church service, first, because they hold the Holy Priesthood, and second, because I know them to be good men. There is virtue in the endowment of the Priesthood. It brings to men who receive it and appreciate it an enlarged conception of life and an
altruism that is Christlike in character. It brings spiritual knowledge and power, and the judgment of a presiding officer holding the Priesthood is generally an inspired judgment. It is the product of noble motive and fervent prayer.
“In matters of church government and discipline, the judgment of presiding officers is mandatory and controlling. In matters of individual guidance to members, their counsel is directory and persuasive only. In the interpretation of scripture and doctrine, they are dependent on their knowledge and experience and inspiration.”
He declared the above to be a “…frank avowal of [his] own personal understanding of these fundamental principles…” I see value in what he shared. Like Elder Richards, I sustain the church and its leaders even though my understanding of some fundamental principles may differ from that of many other Saints.
That’s a great quote from Elder Richards, ji. It does sound like you and I are thinking along the same lines.
In fact, I had thoughts of quoting that line from President Hinkley’s interview with Mike Wallace at some point. Pres Hinkley quoted it in the October 1996 conference
Mr. Wallace: “The Mormons, Mr. President, call you a ‘living Moses,’ a prophet who literally communicates with Jesus. How do you do that?”
Reply: “Let me say first that there is a tremendous history behind this Church, a history of prophecy, a history of revelation, and … decisions which set the pattern of the Church so that there are not constant recurring problems that require any special dispensation. But there are occasionally things that arise where the will of the Lord [is needed and] is sought, and in those circumstances I think the best way I could describe the process is to liken it to the experience of Elijah as set forth in the book of First Kings. Elijah spoke to the Lord, and there was a wind, a great wind, and the Lord was not in the wind. And there was an earthquake, and the Lord was not in the earthquake. And there was a fire, and the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire a still, small voice, which I describe as the whisperings of the Spirit. Now, let me just say, categorically, that the things of God are understood by the Spirit of God, and one must have and seek and cultivate that Spirit, and there comes understanding and it is real. I can give testimony of that.”
My memory is that at the beginning Pres Hinkley said that part about Joseph Smith like you mentioned, ji. That JS got the big outpouring of revelation so that it wasn’t necessary for later leaders to be constantly getting tons of revelation.
One word used by Elder Richards didn’t make sense to me: “In matters of individual guidance to members, their counsel is directory and persuasive only.”. I learned from merriam-webster.com that the definition of “directory” includes “providing advisory but not compulsory guidance” — this fits Elder Richards’ to me.
Another example of the Church experiencing the Streisand Effect (you try to stop something but end up empowering it). At the time (2008), 60% of the population opposed same-sex marriage (and recall that it was Clinton in 1996 who signed the Defense of Marriage Act that for federal purposes defined marriage between a man and woman). However, in its zealous support of Prop 8, the Church came across as the bully trying to deny civil rights to individuals rather than as a protector of traditional values. Perhaps more than anything, Prop 8 turned the cultural tide in favor of same-sex marriage such that now, over 70% support it.
The Streisand Effect struck again with Ensign Peak. While trying to conceal the extent of Church funds, its clumsy and illegal use of multiple shell corps only exposed to the world that Ensign Peak allegedly holds over $200 billion and that Church holds approximately $300 billion in assets. And just what the Church wanted to avoid — members feeling the Church doesn’t need their tithing — has now been amplified.
And I won’t even get into how the Streisand Effect has damaged the Church’s reputation through its initial efforts to conceal and reshape Church history (e.g., the PEW Pole finds that only 15% of Americans have a favorable view of the Church, while 25% have an unfavorable view).
I wasn’t in California, but I remember Amendment 3 in Utah, and I felt the same thing. I was extremely torn. It doesn’t seem to have been as big a deal in meetings here, and as I recall, it won handily (maybe that’s why).
That was 20 years ago. I felt like I was doing what God wanted me to do then, and I feel even more strongly that it was right now. But I still haven’t figured out what it means for my testimony.
How do I follow the “prophet” when as a member I have not been told when he is speaking for God? Is it a conference talk? A book they write? If it is in the Ensign or church manual? Signed document or “official” letter? All the above? Some of the above? Are they prophets as soon as they are ordained as such? Or do they have to actually prophecy to be a prophet? They are also presidents. When are they acting as presidents and not prophets? Do they need to let us know when acting as a prophet vs president? Is changing the look of Temple square a president decision or a prophet decision? Members cleaning buildings, pres or prophet? Temple changes? Two hour block? Mission rules? Ordination ages? Names of YW classes? Tithing settlement or declaration? Temple rec question changes? 100 temples waiting to be finished? What stocks to invest in?
JS made this perfectly clear…”I am only a prophet when acting as the prophet” (or something like that) Somehow over time the culture shifted to prophets are always acting/speaking as prophets. I cant believe that. I vote to bring back the “thus sayeth the Lord” way of old. Until then, I ask God myself and go from there.
I do wonder about changes over time, ji. Quinn talks a bit about that in terms of President McKay.
Indeed, Kevin. As mentioned, I’m okay with our leaders learning from mistakes, rather than needed to believe all decisions are God’s.
I understand these issues being confusing, RJ.
REC, for me, the “caretaker model” makes this all simpler. I see our leaders as inspired administrators, I appreciate their service and wise council, but I see them more like JI’s quote from Elder Richards than how we talk about our leaders currently.
I was in your ward during Prop 8, and I remember how conflicted I felt, especially seeing so many good people that I love vehemently support that bill, which would hurt friends I had. The rhetoric got so extreme I felt like my temple covenants to give everything to the building of the kingdom were being invoked. I felt lucky, though, because I had recently had a baby and so I had a great excuse for not donating time and money to the cause.
I’m curious who are, Moss, as I’m not sure I remember Mosses in the ward (though it has been a while). I do recall that the dad of fellow blogger here at TS, Jonathan Green, was our bishop. [email protected]
My brother and his wife lived in California during the days of Prop 22. He said their bishop called them into his office, and to solicit funds for the cause, said “I’m not coming to you as your bishop.” If that were me, I would have 1) called him a hypocrite and stormed out, 2) written an angry letter to the Area Presidency (who did use lies and distortions to promote the “need” for 22 passing), and 3) notified the IRS.
Not much longer than that, though, a General Authority Seventy visited my ward in North Carolina – he was visiting his son and his son’s family. He also has the same first and last name as my brother-in-law, they are first cousins once removed. So we had a good conversation, and he recognized the name “Taber” and didn’t know why, maybe I should have mentioned my mother.
I realized later that he had been in the North America West Area Presidency when all that was going on. If I had remembered that connection I probably would have given him a hard time about Prop 22. I’m glad I didn’t remember.
Part of the issue at the time for me was that I was 27 and “still single”, and some members, beginning in my BYU days, along with the entire Elders’ Quorum in my next ward, labeled me “gay” for it, or wondered out loud “what was wrong” with me.