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Make Me Obsolete
Editor,
Inveracity, bad taste, humorlessness and retractability aside, are your readers being told that I tolerate or welcome “random, unrelated and tragic crimes” [“Guest Editorial: Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned at QSaltLake,” QSaltLake, Oct. 27] because I’m thought to comment about them?!?
Your ex-editor should brace himself, then. There’s a world outside his Yonkers where people speak out about events that they abhor and suggest ways to make things better. If I suggest after a crime how we might avoid others like it by defending ourselves, it’s nothing other than good advice and science about how we shouldn’t let our “conscience ... make cowards of us all.”
When I ranked second on his personal list of 10 otherwise-pessimistic vagaries, I wondered how life in Utah could be if he and our so-called leaders were equally and identifiably vigilant about speaking out for the protection of ALL our constitutional rights as I seem to him to be about the one he would ignore: the Second Amendment.
So, make me obsolete; speak louder, dance faster, shake more hands, act up more often and beat me to the punch, but until someone else here defends more than the vogue constitutional rights, I suspect I’ll be busy doing, once again, what hasn’t yet been considered acceptably polite behavior. After almost 26 years of doing so, I’ve become familiar with the loud minority of negative short-term opinions about my work.
That’s okay. Out firearm advocates will likely soon be considered as nonchalantly as my work in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s was to help empower out children, out Mormons, out Boy Scouts, out teenagers, out Utahns, out students, out voters, out marchers, out protesters, out public speakers, out commentators, out lobbyists, out partnered couples, out writers, out filmmakers, out Democrats, out campaign workers, out candidates, out contributors, out public officials, out lawmakers, out hate-crime fighters, out employees, out wine lovers and out people with disabilities once did. Imagine it: There were those who complained every inch of the way with those accomplishments, too.
Your ex-editor is just and only the most recent of many, many cranks who considered me more a target than an arrow, and eventually—reluctantly—admitted to me that they were wrong, that I was right and that I knew what the hell I was doing all along. But, like a broken record, it gets extremely old and unoriginal to hear from those with more enthusiasm than experience, or those unlikely to last three activist years let alone almost three activist decades.
Wanna complain about something meaningful? Check out how our out history was irretrievably decimated a few years ago when most of our multigenerational gay archives—including the complete, original seven-year internal documentation of Gay and Lesbian Utah Democrats—were thrown in the trash by one or more community-center staffers because it was taking up too much space. That’s something to care about. I do.
David Nelson
Salt Lake City
A Ten Year Assessment
Dear Editor:
Ten years ago, the LDS Church issued a document known as the Proclamation on the Family. In the most recent general conference, Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve gave us a painful reminder that the Proclamation continues to be used not to build up families, but to attack and condemn families that do not conform to the model currently embraced by the LDS Church.
Specifically, Elder Ballard condemned the “sabotaging” of families and lamented, “In the name of ‘tolerance,’ the definition of family has been expanded beyond recognition to the point that ‘family’ can be any individuals of any gender who live together with or without commitment or children or attention to consequence.” Furthermore, by comparing the Proclamation on the Family to Moroni’s “Title of Liberty,” Elder Ballard suggested that the LDS Church is waging war against gay and lesbian families all over the world.
Ten years ago, the LDS Church didn’t need a proclamation to protect the family. The teachings of Church leaders had already established the central role of the family in society and in God’s plan. However, LDS leaders did need a proclamation to justify the aggressive political campaign they were carrying out against same-sex families.
The Proclamation on the Family also provided the foundation for some of the most offensive statements Church leaders have ever made against gays and lesbians. For example, during a Christmas 2003 devotional, President Hinckley reminded his audience that “the family is under attack” and added that “Sodom and Gomorrah, and the sinful practices observed therein, became examples of that which was evil and abominable in the sight of God.” In March 2004, Deseret Book President Sheri L. Dew publicly condemned a part-LDS gay family for marrying and adopting two twin infants; Dew also suggested a comparison between those who do nothing to oppose same-sex marriages and those who did nothing to oppose the rise of Hitler.
Today Mormon families across the world are torn between the ideal of showing unconditional love to their gay children and the Church’s campaign against gay families and marriage equality. This campaign has produced pain, divided scores of families and increased the number of suicides among gay and lesbian Mormons.
We find it tragically ironic that a Church that is ostensibly committed to protecting the family is also so aggressively engaged in attacking and condemning scores of gay and lesbian families who are faithful to each other and love their children.
As gay and lesbian Mormons, we too grew up in LDS homes where we learned about the importance of the family. We do not wish to destroy anyone’s family. But we wish that LDS leaders would stop using the Proclamation on the Family to attempt to destroy ours.
Olin Thomas, Alyson Bolles,
James Morris, and Hugo Salinas
Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons
QSaltLake welcomes letters from its readers. Please email letters@slmetro.com or mail your letter to: Editor, QSaltLake, 352 S. Denver St. Ste 350, Salt Lake City, UT 84111. We reserve to right to edit for length or libel. |
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