Part 1 of 5: Becoming an Atheist – a Personal Journey of Devout Mormon: How Deep Is Your Devotion? Can it be measured by others?

Before you can understand how I became an Atheist, I think you have to understand how deeply I believed in God, not just during my years as a Mormon, but also as a Christian being raised in a Christian family.  My mother was not really religious, though she was a woman who believed in God.  My dad, he never had any inclination towards God or Church.  He seemed to have disdain for religion and faith.

Though I only stepped foot in church maybe six or seven times in my entire life, my family was definitely a family that was filled with Christian influences.  I had an aunt who tried on churches like Imelda Marcos.  I was her favorite nephew and she dragged me to churches on several occasions during my youth.  My mother’s family was ruled by my great-grandmother Henderson and her matriarchal disdain for those who did not follow her brand of radical faith.  A Texas woman of the Dustbowl era, she instilled a fear of God in all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

It wasn’t only the family I was raised in that supported a Christian society, it was simply the American way.  My dad, a black sheep with no faith, rarely spoke ill of believers.  He would just have no part of it.  Family members gave us Bibles and our grandparents made sure we had children’s Bibles, picture story books based on miracles in the Bible, and those old record and cartoon illustrated Bible stories.

From a very young age I was a reader, and I had devoured those, along with every book I could get my hands on.  I loved to read.  I still do to this day.  Knowing that I have a passion for reading and studying should really sink into your head.  You see, it is reading and studying that paved the way for me to become an Atheist.  I loved to read as a child.  I found peace in reading.  I found escape.

I had a good idea of the Bible’s stories, the grand stories of Moses and the Ten Commandments, Noah and the Ark, and Adam and Eve.  I knew the big stories in the Bible along with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  How could anyone raised in the United States of America, whether they go to church or not, miss the Christian culture we live in?  But I did not know the story of Christ’s blood being spilled for our sins.  I only knew He died on a cross.  Those were in every home I had ever been in my entire life.

My faith in God was not just from exposure to God in our culture, but from years of being alone and silently praying for my life to get better, for my life to be safer, to simply be accepted.  It was in those quiet times alone in my bedroom that I would think, really think about things.  I would be building huge hills out of my blankets and driving my hot wheels around, alone.  I would talk to God about how lonely I was.

I would beg Him to help me understand why none of the guys wanted me around, why my own brothers, cousins, and friends all called me faggot. When I was playing and alone, I would sing over and over again, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.  My great-grandmother Henderson had taught me that song one day when I was very young.  She lived in the Hayward Hills, in a house without a toilet.

I can’t remember how old I was, but when we stayed at her house she would let her hair down from her severely braided bun.  It was so tight and gray, but the braids were a deep brown.  She would let her hair down and kneel next to us and pray.  She was so stern in everything in life, but in these moments when she prayed, I believed that she was talking to God and He was listening to her.

I never doubted the stories of the Bible growing up.  I had developed and ability to talk to God, really talk to God as if He were really there from a very young age.  I knew God listened to my great-grandmother, you could almost feel His answers as she prayed.  In those times I was alone and sad, I talked to God as if He were there.  In my mind He was there, He was the only one I could really tell how lonely I was.

As I grew, I remember walking down the road on Ruth Glen, in Sunol, CA.  I would see the morning rays of sun streaming through the trees and I would thank God for its beauty.  When you’re truly alone you learn to pray and listen to God.

My faith in God was formed in my family, though we never really went to church.  I never really knew all the rules of churches, having been in very few.  I had a working knowledge that praying made me feel better when I was alone.

From there I think my journal entries can pretty much sum up that my faith in God as a Mormon, was a living, breathing reality in my life.  I was a believer in God, beyond that I was a Mormon, one of the most extreme Christian Religions.  You can take me at my word or you can read several years of my journals and decide for yourself, but I am telling you, I believed in Jesus Christ and I had a deep and profound relationship with God for most of my life.

I am going to tell you right now that reading in my own writing, my constant dedication to the word of God, is frankly embarrassing to me.  It really should not be embarrassing, it is not like I was alone in my belief of a higher power.  I am not the only gullible person in the world.  In fact in my view, most of the people who read this blog are the gullible ones, but then I have been where you are.

I have believed in God, deeply believed in God and this is a story of how I came to know, as surely as the reader knows there is a God, I know there is not a God.  That knowledge did not come to me through science or study, it came to me through enlightenment.  The same enlightenment that developed in me as a young kid that allowed me to talk to myself and feel the answers like my great-grandmother did.

I know a few posts back, I alluded to my first quasi-gay experience after years of devout Mormonism. Masturbating in a car with my door open next to a car with a hot young guy masturbating, probably does not count as sex by Bill Clinton’s standards, I mean we were not even in the same car.  For a devout Mormon, that single transgression was clearly going to pull the spirit of God from me.

That is what I had been taught.  I had been struggling with controlling my sexual inclinations from the day I joined the church, but that day when I poured out my soul and my ultimate failure as a husband, a father, a follower of God and His restored Gospel, I felt God.  I felt Him answer me in the same way He had been answering me my entire life.  In the moment I accepted myself as I was created, that same spiritual feeling flooded my body.  It was the clear and distinct knowledge that I was created gay.

That knowledge did not wipe away seven years of Christianity away.  It only made room for me, it did not wipe away the guilt of not being able to live up to God’s laws.  It was just a moment when God answered the prayers of a desperate gay man, a man who was losing his soul.  God reached out to me and said He made me gay and He loved me.  That was all that was born.  I promised God that I would live for Michelle and the kids on that day.  My soul would burn in Hell, but not my children.  If there was any way, my sacrifice for my wife and kids, I hoped I prayed that that would be enough to wipe away my sins of homosexuality.

I had a really deep and abiding faith.  It was not like one minute I was a believer and the next I was not.  It was a long and personal struggle that was illuminated by brief pieces information leading to a thorough and total research of a subject followed by a change in the way I viewed information.

Becoming an Atheist was a journey for me, a journey that took years.

Once you accept who you are, even if you believe that who you are is evil, you quickly realize that you don’t feel any different as a person prior to engaging in a sinful act as you did before.  It is not that I did not feel guilt.  Oh, I felt plenty of guilt about cheating on my ex-wife, which is exactly what was going to happen.  I felt extremely guilty violating my Temple covenants with God, but God never left me.

Those quiet, meditative moments where the lessons of life sift through our minds and we accept ourselves as we are were still part of my daily life.  I never once felt like God left me.  Kind of funny now that I look back and realize He never left because He never was.  It was like I started paying attention to faith in a new way.  That night in the depths of my despair as a Christian, I learned how to listen to my own heart.  It had always been there, an overwhelming desire to love myself as I am despite what the world thinks.

It seemed not long after that, that I would hear people in Fast and Testimony meeting bear their testimony of their struggles with temptation and how Satan was making them do things.  Instead of simply nodding with agreement, I started not believing Satan.  Everyone goes on and on about Satan and evil and that his angels are all around us, tempting us to be evil and that he knows what our weaknesses are and he is out to get us.

One would think that one who had followed a church with the devotion and steadfastness that I had, would be relatively astute at identifying evil spirits, especially if one was cursed with the sin of homosexuality.  That is what I had come to accept, really.  I was created gay by God.  For whatever reason, God cursed me with this sinful desire.  His angels were in me, controlling me, making me gay.  That is what I was supposed to believe, right?

But there never was any time in my life when an evil spirit would have invaded me.  What does a mother of a gay child tell her other children?  That their brother, at some point in his life was infected by one of Satan’s angels with the sin of homosexuality and God allowed it because He really was not that righteous after all?  That is what Christians and Mormons are basically saying, well the fundamentalist do.

The more I thought about the actual realities of my Christian belief, combined with the knowledge that I was clearly born gay, things became clearer to me.  I started paying attention to the world around me.  I would listen to REM Singing Losing My Religion and I found myself silently cheering the gay rights movement, but I was stuck.

Humans become enlightened through information.  Our worlds expand, and just like my world expanded and exploded with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, my world was going to expand in ways and with ideas I had never before entertained.  That simple disbelief in Satan’s power and the true understanding beyond what everyone was telling me, that God created me gay was the foundation for an exploration that took ten years to traverse.

Though along the way I began experimenting sexually with men, really experimenting.  I had launched my next intellectual pursuit.  I enrolled in Modesto Junior College ans was going to come face to face with my religion and my beliefs in ways I had never expected.  I know it might seem easy to write my story off, say I am a sinner, I’m being deceived, but you know, I discovered something…

And you are curious.  I am dangling this out there like a carrot in front of a horse, or a Pearl of Great Price.  I am.

Because, you have to really believed in God for this story to make sense.  You have to understand the depth of devotion Mormons live with day in and day out to completely understand a Mormon’s devotion to God.  My devotion to God.  Mitt Romney’s devotion to God.

I have already taught you about Mormon devotion in this post.  I taught you by my life experiences how deeply Mormons pray to a living and breathing God.  Every breath of every day is committed to serving God.  We served in our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools, and in our lives.  We served God everywhere.

We are trained to identify the spirit of God, much in the same way I had learned from my grandmother.  The process of prayer and gaining insight from prayer is taught in very clear and concise words.  We study out a subject, we make up our own minds, we take the decision to God, and He grants us a burning in the bosom, a warm, comforting clear and concise knowledge that what were are doing is in God’s plan for our life.

Of course, the studying you are filling your mind with is dogma that supports the outcome.  The skill was exactly what I had witnessed in my great-grandmother.  Prayer, or meditation as I call it now, is a time of enlightenment for all humans, where our brains sift through and sort and allow us to make sense of this world.  It is nothing special, we are all born with the ability to talk to ourselves and answer ourselves.  It really is that simple.  Based on the information given, we make our own decisions and generally we feel OK about them.  It’s called thinking.

What I am trying to convey is that after seven years of living, breathing and practicing Mormonism, it dawned on me that this gay thing that I know I had been born with, was not going away.  It just was.  There was a deal to be made with God, but I was beginning to accept myself despite the teachings and the fortress of Mormonism around me.

You see, becoming an atheist does not destroy your inherent spirituality, you just lose the superstitious parts.  You still feel that connection to the world that we all feel; that deep compassion for all of humanity.  None of that leaves, in fact you are exactly the same.  You’re not evil when you rise to the occasion of disbelief.

Why would God fill my soul with peace and confirm I was gay?  Was that the devil in reality filling me with a quite calm, resting my soul?  Was that Satan?

 

My Journal Documents Exactly how often I confessed I was gay to my leaders in the Mormon Church

May 15, 1985, (continued entry from last post)

During priesthood meeting, the teacher was talking about baptism and repentance which is a popular subject around here. I started feeling weird. The spirit told me to get up and go talk to my (Branch President-name withheld). He had to have known I was coming. The spirit told me to get up and go talk to the President. He left just a few minutes before I did. I went to his office and he was not there, so I walked back to the meeting. While I was sitting there I started shaking and feeling funny. I could not stand it anymore. I got up again and went to his office this time he was there. He was talking to another young Elder. He asked me to wait a few moments and later I went in and we talked. I told him about very private incidents that happened before I joined the church. It was very hard to talk about it but I felt a great weight was lifted from me. I weeped as I told him but I reflected on the suffering of Christ though. my suffering was minimal. I love the Savior for what he did for me, I am thankful to be serving him.

When you are in the mission training center for a stateside mission, you are there for about three weeks. The entire time they are really hitting the missionaries who are preparing to go out and serve the Lord with one huge message. You must completely repent of all your sins in order to have the spirit of God with you while you are teaching the Gospel.

I had been in almost weekly meetings for two years preparing to go on a mission.  I had confessed I was gay when I was Baptized, and my weekly meetings with my Bishop had dwindled down the more successful I became at eliminating masturbation and my homosexual inclinations.  But I was still gay.  The thoughts and the attractions to me had hung on.  They had clung to every fiber of my being.  I was living in a Mission Training Center surrounded by men.  I told the Branch President of my struggles.  We prayed together and he assured me that I was on the correct path.  He told me that I was a follower of Christ who had been cleansed by the blood Jesus spilled for me.  I was morally clean and the Lord knew my real purpose was to share the Gospel.

I so badly wanted this to be true.  At the time it was true.  It was my only truth and my only Salvation.

May 19, 1985

Dear Journal,

Today was real intense. I studied hard and long. I helped Elder Barnhart learn some of the discussions. He really needs help.

May 20, 1985

Today was not quite as intense as yesterday. Though a lot happened. I was able to pass the 5th discussion mastery checklist today. The Lord has truly blessed me with the opportunity to to learn so easily. I did not talk to many sister missionaries today. I wanted to be more obedient to the rules. My companion teased me for it, but most of the time I enjoy talking to the sisters because they are all here for the same reason I am. To serve God. Sister Ruth Karg had to leave tonight for Virginia and I cried as she left. She has helped me so much. Heavenly Father puts us all in places we need to be there. She was there for me. I have decided to “Dear Jane” Michelle. I don’t need the distraction here anymore. I feel bad for what I am doing, but I need to do it.

Shelley was waiting for me and we had planned to get married after I got home.  Ruth was a friend from my life in southern California.  She had gone to the Institute of Religion.  You might say that I had made a promise to date Ruth that night when she got home and I was breaking up with Shelley.

Someone told me today on Facebook that I was focused on lust.

Focused on Lust! WTF?????

It appears to me that I was focused on Mormonism, totally focused and completely wrapped in Mormon thought and Mormon life.

Poor Shelley, she never knew.  There were actually three girls waiting for me.  Two I met at the MTC.  It was a badge of honor to have girls waiting for you.  The girls loved me.  The guys, they really just tolerated me.  I could feel that they knew I was gay.  I could always feel that.  I wasn’t hiding it well but I tried, I really tried.  For those of you who think I was led by Satan and followed only my lust, you are blind.  I have rarely met anyone, even when I was a faithful Mormon, that tried to be faithful and honest and spirit-filled for seven straight years.

Surely the journal and my writings in my journal testify to a life lived with God.  I did live with God, and I shoved everything I ever was behind me.  I buried it.  I repented.  I found Jesus.

I found the promise of redemption.

No one needed redemption more than me.  I was a faggot hated by everyone, and Jesus promised to take it away.

Here I am more than two years into the Mormon Church, two years battling every natural urge as a gay male I had.  I was praying harder than anyone I knew.  I knew I was chosen by God to do this work.  I was filled with purpose and spirit.  I was winning the war, and Jesus was guiding me.

You know, it felt pretty special, to be chosen by Jesus to be saved from my life of sin.  I read the words daily as if my life depended on it.  I prayed with fervor as if my life depended on it.

Yet people only see what they want to see.  They can only fit their understanding of what I went through into their limited understanding of the Bible and their moral superiority at being able to judge others and put them in their place.

Yeah, I really feel put in my place by people, ‘who know not what they do’.

 

Part 1 of 4–The Universe Demanded a Deal from a Monster and a Coward: 10 years was the best I could do?

“You could have set me free 10 years Earlier” The Universe demanded a deal, I should have included her….

 Last week I had a talk with Shelly, my ex-wife, mother of our four children.  We talk a lot and I am not always easy to deal with.  Between her and Bill I have found my way to where I am now, and it seems that I might finally be able to tell this story.  You see, I always assumed that Michelle must have known that I was struggling with being gay.  I mean, I told her before we were married that I had same sex experiences before I joined the church, and my Bishop told me to tell her that Jesus has forgiven me and she should also.  I said, “If you are concerned about marrying me you should talk to your Bishop”.  I had rehearsed that line from the day Bishop Davis and I had our ‘temple marriage recommend’ interview.

Mormons have to get certified worthy as individuals to enter the temple annually and prior to marriage.  During my ‘temple recommend interview’, I shared my concerns with my Bishop.   I told him that I had not participated in homosexual sex since I had joined the church three years earlier, and that I still thought about men sexually.  I reported that daily prayer, scripture reading and writing daily in my journal had kept me on the path of eternal life and that I took my temple covenants seriously.  I had just finished serving a mission three weeks earlier, in May of 1987.  For more than four years I had been fighting every single day to not act upon my sexual feelings.  It had taken me more than a year to stop masturbating.  Mormons have to be free from masturbation for at least one year prior to entering the mission field.  Though one might say I slipped up several times in the mission field and had to confess these slip-ups in letters to my Mission President, Stanley Smoot.  I have all 50 of those letters and his responses.  They will be published, it’s so amusing to read them today.

But back to Shelley and that warm June day.  We were driving on 680 South through Pleasanton, CA.  I gave her no details and she trusted my answer and never spoke to her Bishop.  This, my friends, is the ultimate pinnacle of power Mormon women live under.  God says it to the man and man says it to the woman.  I told Michelle what my Bishop had said; Jesus has forgiven me.  She knew I was speaking the truth and that her Bishop would simply tell her that my Bishop was right.  In the 1980’s, the church was a huge advocate  of marriage therapy for homosexuals.  They had already discovered that electrocuting our genitals did not work and that it was actually quite abusive.  So getting us married was in line with the Gospel’s teachings.

I asked Shelly, knowing what she knows today, had I told her I had same sex attractions prior to joining the church would she marry me today?  She said, ‘no’.  To me, that is the most telling part of our life story together.  We both had an infantile understanding of homosexuality and its immutable effects.  I wanted to believe that this immutable human characteristic was a choice, who wouldn’t want to believe it was a choice?  I wanted to believe that it was a choice, that I chose to have gay experiences when I was young and that I was simply choosing not to have gay experiences now.  I wanted to believe that my juvenile sexual experiences were simply boys being boys or curiosity.  I did not want to be gay.  I had not been gay since I had joined the Mormon Church about four years earlier.

Today, my confession to a young woman would most certainly be one of the largest alarm bells a man could ring that would scream, “this man is not for you”.  Case closed, end of discussion.  Even the Mormon Church had moved its position.  In the 1980’s we were encouraged to get married.  Today’s approach is lifelong celibacy. Yeah, that works!  Look at the Catholics to see how well celibacy works.  The church is moving forward, and at least they are no longer setting families up to fail like they did our family.  We were set up to fail.  This was an impossible task, and in our innocence and naivety we both greedily latched on.

My confession in place, and her willing obedience to the will of man in the name of God, we were married.  I had been home for a month and we had a wedding planned for two months after I returned, but we eloped.  Listen, as hard as it is to say this out loud, I was horny after four years of sexual repression and virtually free of masturbation, I would have fucked a dog had one bent over and presented itself to my throbbing cock.  I know, strong adult content, sexually inappropriate.  I am going to say right now I will be sexually inappropriate as I write this.  I am generally sexually inappropriate, it is what it is and it is likely immutable also, but I do control if I see fit.  This is just a warning as to what follows will be very sexual in nature.  I sexually repressed myself for 17 years and what follows is to the best of my memory, which is vividly alive through these journals.

I assumed Shelly knew I spent 17 years of my life living in a self-imposed torture.  That she knew I was tormented every day by something I did not understand, that despite year after year of pleading with God, begging God, writing in my journal in code so no one would ever know what the real problem was outside my Bishops.  That ear after year reading scriptures, going to church, going to temple, family home evening, temple marriage, funny underwear and all, I was still gay.

We eloped to Salt Lake City, Utah for a temple wedding.  Everything that could possibly go wrong on that trip did go wrong.  We eloped because we were horny.  I was 23 and Michelle was 24, (an old maid by Mormon standards).  We were kissing, having sleepovers where I would spend the night at her house in a different room.  One day, we were in her bedroom kissing and dry humping and I came in my pants.  Twenty-three year old men who have not had sex of any kind in four years are horny.  I was so horny it did not matter it was a woman.  I guess men in prison and men on ships can relate, you know, ‘a man is better than a hand’.  For gays and lesbians in marriages shrouded in excessive cultural sexual oppression it is just like prison.  After four years of no sex any sexual contact would be a welcome relief.

The car we were driving, my mother in law’s car, broke down.  We were stranded in Nevada, with little money and an appointment to get married the next afternoon, arranged by my former mission president Stanley Smoot.  Sitting in the Winnemucca McDonald’s, we were next to another Mormon family discussing this situation and they offered to take Michelle and I on.  Joy, Michelle’s mother, would meet us there.  We did not have money for a hotel room for two nights, as one of the nights was being spent in Winnemucca.  This nice family offered us a place to sleep and then dropped us off at the Temple so Michelle and I could get her a dress and make the arrangements.  Joy arrived at the Temple as we kneeled at the altar for our sealing for time and all eternity.  Let the sex games begin!

Michelle and I were horny.  We were young, and we were filled with ideals.  We both deeply believed we were creating an eternal family and that these sexual urges we were feeling needed to happen in marriage, so we eloped before we fucked.  Despite my sister’s insistence that Michelle and I had sex before we were married, we did not.  My hand did graze her breast on the day we married in the Salt Lake Temple, but we simply shrugged it off since in a few hours we would be married and gleefully tucked into our room.  That night, Michelle and I had sex and I climaxed six times, rubbing her raw.  Who knew that could happen?  What can I say, after four years of no sex, I was DTF!  The rules had changed it was open season on sexual intercourse.

The next day we began the drive home.  On that drive I saw that I had made a mistake, a really deep and eternal mistake.  I had sex six times with a woman, and all six times I was thinking about kissing Elder Robert Allen Gardner Brown.  I was still gay and I had to picture a man to have sex with my wife.  It crushed me.  I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life and I sat quietly in the car.  Somewhere on that long dusty ride, Michelle could not help but notice my solemn face.  I was crushed for me, for her.  I was gay and I was married for time and all eternity to a woman.  I simply told her that I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life.  I told myself I was stuck with it.

I knew it was a bad decision and I knew it was never going to work, but my life was filled with people who loved me.  Michelle loved me, my friends did not call me gay anymore, and no one ever discussed it.  I was a return missionary.  I had an obligation to control my sexuality and to get married so that I could make it into the celestial Kingdom.  Michelle’s family was this huge fifth generation Mormon family.  They loved me and I was rescuing Michelle from a future that seemed most certainly not to involve family or children.  Most girls get blessings that foretell temple marriages and children and Michelle was missing that blessing.  She had come to believe she was never to be married until we met.

There is a love story there and that story will come out in one of these posts I am sure, but let’s get back to that night a few weeks back where Shelley and I had a real talk about our life together.  The one where I had confessed to Shelly just how deep my torment and struggle was, just how secretive I was and just how desperate my life was to become.

Michelle and I have had a number of talks over the years since we divorced.  Her life has been a long, hard struggle and she put those kids first in ways that I really could not.  I have to stick to this story.  I have to tell it.  You see, Michelle and I were talking about one of our daughters who seems to think that I abandoned her and her mother when I left the family to be gay.  I have harbored resentment towards Michelle and her family from the day we divorced.  Michelle, her family, her attorney and the Church wanted me out of the picture.  Michelle and her attorney and her family offered me the opportunity to sign off on my children, lose all access to them and never have to pay child support.  That is what they wanted.

When I left Michelle I was never leaving my children or abandoning them, I was simply leaving their mother.  I never knew she would end up fleeing the country with our children without even notifying me.  She up and left and took the children out of the country.  I showed up to pick them up for my visitation and they had been in Canada for two weeks.  It took me two days to find them.

I harbor a lot of resentment towards Michelle for doing that to our children, and the very few interactions I have had with her family seemed to confirm a deep and abiding message of hate directed towards me over the years.  Most of which Michelle was unaware of until I told her.  Michelle was not the enemy in this equation, it really was her family.  Her mother showed up one weekend to Bill and I’s bed and breakfast.  When Bill answered the door and I introduced her to him she said, “You mean nothing to me” and just stood there rudely.  There were a number of these types of occurrences with members of Michelle’s family that led me to believe my children were being taught that I abandoned them.  Michelle never told the kids I abandoned them, though she was guilty in her own little digs. For years, when I called I was referred to as the ‘Butthead’.

I put an end to that and a lot of other shenanigans by calling Michelle’s Mormon Bishop.  I addressed him from his belief that he, as the Bishop, was responsible for the spiritual welfare of my children.  He tried to brush me off, but I quoted Mormon doctrine to him and persuaded him that my children’s spiritual welfare was endangered.  He intervened, and Shelley and Biff, Shelley’s husband were set on a more correct path in their interactions with me.

Sometimes completely understanding Mormon faith has its benefits in holding Mormons accountable to the doctrines of their faith.

As you can plainly see I really resented the Church, Michelle, and her family for taking my children more than 50 miles away while a small Carson City, NV judge was bent on keeping me from my kids.  He said that I lived too openly gay of a life to have access to my kids, and it took me nine months to get permission to see them.

I hold a lot of resentment for the mental abuse my children and I suffered at the hands of people who are close-minded and lack the enlightenment that their faiths now show towards gay and lesbian people.  All of us suffered, all of us were victims of a society coming to grips with a group of people who had been so completely and totally hidden and were beginning to realize their power and worth.

Anita Bryant and the religious right were demonizing us, but we were beginning to come out and speak.  We were beginning to group, and I was married to a woman for time and all eternity.  I believed that God would take this away.  He never did.  If anyone says that I did not pray enough, or that I did read the scriptures enough, then they do not know how completely I dive into any venture in my life.

When I jump into something, I do it all the way.  I hold nothing back. That is how I embraced Christianity, because as a Mormon I was a Christian first.  Mormons are Christians no matter what the blathering lunatic evangelicals say.  They worship Jesus Christ and they believe he died for their sins.  To me, that is the definition of Christian.  Let me tell you that in my 17 years as a Mormon, I consumed more Mormon and Christian Doctrine than you can possible imagine.  It was my mana from heaven.

The Bible, The Book of Mormon, Marvelous Work and a Wonder, The Miracle of Forgiveness, Mormon Doctrine, I read almost every major work produced for the Mormon Church, by the Mormon Church and about the Mormon Church.  It was that constant religious obsession that dominated my day to day life.  I kept reading, reinforcing the message of Christ in a desperate attempt to wipe out the gay.

I consumed every article in the Church’s monthly magazine.  I attended not only the weekly church meetings, but all the various church entertainment activities.  We had family camp outs and our life rolled forward.  I was always thought of as a zealot.  My wife confirmed she thought I took it all a little too literally or too seriously.  How was I supposed to take it?  This was the only thing I had ever learned about homosexuality; that it was wrong, that I probably was gay because I masturbated or was molested as a child and that masturbation leads to homosexuality.

Yes, I was molested, but I knew I was gay before I was molested.  He was not that much older than me and I just though this is what boys did.  I mean I was attracted to my gender, and my earliest dreams of sex were of men.  I never chose this.  Just in the same way straight people can’t identify when they were straight.

Michelle knew.  She buried it.  She ignored the signs, like when she discovered my history file online contained porn addresses.  The first time, I blamed it on pop ups and a paper I was writing on homosexuality and pop ups.  The second time, I blamed it on the 19 year-old Mormon kid we had living with us because his parents could not control him.

One would think after the fabulous work we did on Christmas trees alone in the years we were married she would have gotten a clue, or the fact that I would allow her to climb on top of me and ride me till she orgasms, then I would flip her over enter her doggy style while going into a deep visualization of the local guy from Home Depot, the post man, or Mario who always rings twice.  This only worked for so long.

But we were wrapped up in creating a family, earning a living and going to church.  Sometimes I look back at those years in the 1980’s when everything really cool was going on and I realize I missed out on just being me.  While the Mormons literally saved my life, there was a personal cost and a personal toll that I was going to have to face.

I never once told Michelle how difficult the struggle had been.  She told me that as far as she knew I was straight one day and gay the next.

I sat there holding the phone in my hand.  My wife did not know I was struggling the entire 13 years we were married.  So I told her the nitty gritty details.  I did not tell her everything.  I don’t know if she was ready for everything, but it dawned on me that I am ready to tell the nitty gritty details of my coming to terms with being gay.

Maybe if I tell it as closely as I can remember it, from the first time I slipped up and looked at a Playgirl to the crazed obsession gay sex became until I was set free, maybe just maybe another person will be saved.

You see, I only lasted as a good Mormon for seven of those seventeen years. The last ten I did out of duty, out of love, out of fear, and finally out of desperation.  The universe demanded a deal from me.

I was given a life, a straight man’s life.  I had his trappings and I wore them well.  I could never be who and what I was supposed to be.  I had Michael, Jayne, Hillary and Felicity.  Everything they ever knew, everything they had ever been taught was going to fall apart and I could not face that, but more importantly I was Michelle’s savior, at least to me.  She had very little opportunities for love and I was going to destroy her.

Listen in this story.  I am a MONSTER, not a martyr.  The Monster is a part of me every day, looking to be abandoned by people who love me.  People whom I knew were going to abandon me did.  I could have prevented it.  I guess if I want to be truly honest, I could have made it to the end of my life pretending to be straight keeping everybody happy, and growing angrier and angrier by the day.  My ex-wife and my kids will readily tell you that I could be a monster when it came to anger and be absolutely evil with my insults.  The repression fed the Monster, and it was not until I accepted myself as who I was that the Monster subsided.

Michelle and I were both volatile.  She was in a relationship haunted by the words I uttered on our second day and I was haunted by my identity.

The Monster comes out of me now and then, especially when I am wounded.  I can’t tell you how painful it is to look at yourself day in and day out and wonder why God made you gay when you finally utter those words.  When you finally surrender to the fact that God made you gay and when you hear yourself say it and accept it, the only thing you feel is love.

I walk every day with that feeling, no longer supported by the delusion of God in my life.  I was born gay, I am gay, I was created gay by natural laws that are beyond me.  I am ok with it and would never wish to be anything but gay.  Straight seems a mystery to me and unappetizing, despite having eaten plenty of meals at the straight buffet.  I have no use for feeling anything but love for who I am and what I am.  It just is.

How could Michelle not have known this was a constant daily struggle, didn’t she ever read my journals, they were laying all around the house?  No she hadn’t.

Wow, I thought she spent the last 12 years thinking she and the kids were the only victims.  She had no idea I was suffering and tormented every day of my life.

So I told her when it began, when I started losing control and when my faith in God left and she said, “You could have left me 10 years earlier, I could have been free earlier”.  I never thought of it in those terms.  I quickly reminded her that we had two more children after that, and we love them dearly so we should tread slowly down this path.

I could hear the hurt in her words.  Like I said I am the MONSTER here, don’t have pity for me.  While I am a victim of societal pressures, cultural pressures, family pressures, and a whole lot of self hate, I was a COWARD.

Only a coward would have been this afraid to face the truth.  So the pages that follow and the depth of despair that I take you through, be aware that I was a coward.  I was afraid.  I was afraid of a lifetime of loneliness.  I liked being straight and I was too cowardly to give it up.

The Universe demanded a deal from a monster and a coward.  The best I could come up with was, “Michelle you might see it as deceptive, because I was a coward”.  The next post will bring my readers face to face with the my deal and how it evolved until it could no longer pay its side of the bill.

 

Deanna has also left the church……..read her own words, very powerful!

In Deanna’s own words:

 I am so sick of the freezing cold and have never gotten used to Idaho weather.

I just wanted to let you know after reading a couple of your blogs that I think it’s so healing that you are speaking your truth about what you experienced. I just know too many Mormons who are so naive and clueless ( I was among them) and you would be surprised how many people in the church are leaving over over the church’s involvement with prop 8 etc.

A lot of people don’t know this but I have left the church and am in the process of getting my name off of the records. (******** doesn’t even know this) My reasons are many but prop 8 is just one of the many reasons. 

In all honesty, I never had a clue how much you struggled. We all just loved you because you were Dale. We naive LDS kids just did what we were told and promised happily ever after if we did. And we trusted everyone but ourselves. 

Laughing at the people that come out of the woodwork to argue on your blog. 
Interesting thought, you’re not alone in your feelings that you saw the church pull you out of your miserable family life and teach you some good things (we were such ignorant hicks) I learned how to be a decent mother from watching other women in wards on my mission. I had morals, standards, was taught to serve. But sheesh. They could’ve At least told me the truth about polygamy and Joseph Smith and what I was really doing when I made that “slitting” motion across my neck and gut. 

We all believed in the magic.

If we could just “get to the temple for Time and All Eternity….” 

So grateful for education!!! 

I laugh when I think of all of the stupid stake dances we dressed up for every week to hopefully “meet the one”. LOL 

I remember that Halloween dance where you and ******** dressed up, (I went as Boy George and my Date went as Cindi Lauper) I am sad that someone felt insecure enough to be rude to you. 

My boys and I are really open about their experiences navigating through adolescence. One of the things that pissed me off was having a bishop insist on monitoring my son’s sex thoughts for “worthiness”. When you get older, you realize that the crazy sex drive you had as a teenager (and was told was so vile and evil) will one day go away…and you’ll miss it. LOL. 

I still think you will help so many people with your story. You will hopefully help people accept themselves and not look to someone else for answers. 

Imagine, knowing what you now know, and how your life could have been different. 

I wish I could go back and grab myself and hand her a handwritten note!!! 

BTW–Congratulations on your daughter’s acceptance into college.
~Deanna

2010 I took the summer off of school to recover from a torn rotator cuff and I called it my “apostate summer” because I decided to read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on about church history.

My drive was to know why I felt I had to marry into my ex’s family (I always felt Utah Mormons somehow were better Mormons because they were related to the pioneers) and my lack of self esteem just fed their ignorant superiority and they treated me like shit. 

I found out through tracing family history that it was because of his polygamist roots (grandfather was a child of polygamist that married 4th wife 14 years after the manifesto) lots and lots of secrets. My ex sis in law is related to Mitt Romney. Dumb fake bitch. Not once has she ever spoken to me since my ex got ex’d for having a harem while he was Big-Ass Bishopric guy. Mormons are really great at pretending all is well in Zion…..

I honestly think in 20 years, the Mormons are going to look like idiots for fighting against same-sex marriage and will pretend they never did that either. 

I had a professor in college who had a long talk with me and cried because he went through the entire Mormon thing, mission, marrying a woman to “fix” his gayness, leaving his wife and 4 kids for another man and trying to reconcile it all. it was interesting to learn where he was coming from. I think this is too common and if the church doesn’t acknowledge this, they will ruin more families with incorrect information.

The Mormons and the Apostates

It really was a Camelot Time, going to Church Dances and Devotionals and to Church on Sundays.  It gave my unguided life a direction. Of course Deanna’s name has been changed.  She is not ‘out’ as a non-Member, even to one of her closest life long friends.

It feels great to know that I am not alone in escaping.  I totally missed Deanna…

I don’t think I need to add anything here, she said it all!

 

The Moment I Learned to Learn and Realized I was in Love With Elder Barnson

May 12, 1985

Boy was I humbled today. Elder Junio, my teacher, showed me how little I really know about the Gospel. He railed on me. I certainly have a lot to learn. But on the funnier

Elder Manley Studying at the Mission Training center in his cubicle.  We each had one in our dorm-style rooms.  This was my first dorm-type living.  It was fun, boys will be boys!

side the class calls me ‘Spencer W. Sawyer’. It makes me feel good. I never applied myself before like I am doing now. I started studying the second discussion. We get tested on it tomorrow. I thank my Father in Heaven so much for the help he has given me through the spirit. In the Book of John we learn that the Holy Ghost teaches. I have been taught by the Holy Spirit. I know the Gospel is true and I love it here! Tomorrow will bring many more blessings I am sure.

May 13, 1985 5:47 AM

I got a great night sleep last night. I even woke up at 200 AM to shower and study. I went to open the door and it had been pennied. We can’t get out till someone lets us out. So here I am full of energy and I can’t get out of this room. Figures I would be the one to find out.

PM (entry)

Well we got out. I am still distracted a lot, but I’ve resolved to be obedient.  and follow God‘s rules. We heard Elder Robert Harbertson speak at the devotional tonight. Tomorrow I am going to keep my eye(s) single to the Glory of God. Well no use crying over spilt milk.

PS: I passed the second discussion.

May 14, 1985

Today we learned the 4th discussion, tried different door approaches, and had scripture basketball. You know the spirit is always here. It’s always teaching. Today I was able to pass the 3rd discussion off. My Heavenly Father helped me greatly. After the day was over our district had a testimony meeting. The spirit was definitely present.Each one of the Elders in my District have a strong testimony. They are here to serve God, not full around. But it is funny how we all get distracted from our work sometimes. I wonder if it is because Satan‘s trying to keep us from learning things which will bless us in the mission field.

There is no place in the world I would rather be than at the MTC. I’ve learned so much in the last seven days. My testimony has grown beyond belief. There will come a time when I am Senior Companion and I hope that everything I’ve learned here will help me be an asset. I am going to work harder tomorrow. Well tomorrow is P-Day (Preparation Day-one day a week missionaries are off from 10 AM to 6PM to prepare for the week, generally ends at a dinner appointment at a local members house).

May 15, 1985

Today was prep-day! Went to the Mall and ate some real food. No toilet trouble tonight. I also went to the Provo Temple. I loved it, words cannot describe it. I really need to learn to be humble. It is really hard to learn that trait. I seem so worldly sometimes, it annoys me. (I think I wrote annoy it maybe, hard to read could be angers)

I wonder what Elder Barnson is up to today? He was so kind to me and I appreciated him accepting me as I was.

I have been a member of the Church for a year and 10 months. I followed the rules, sometimes falling, but always climbing back to the top. Well maybe just a step or two farther from the bottom. We gave elder Manley a blessing today, after we went through the Temple. I also learned to play basketball the right way by Elder Barnson. He’s in our branch here! He’s helped me out a lot! 

I wish I could say or write what I feel but it won’t come (I would never put it in words). I need to put a little spirit into my life here! I need to feel the burnings. I need to pray for a while. I need to feel his love again. I need to feel humility. His glory is so powerful and I am just a simple man. I want to be like my father, so I just follow his teachings. How far can I go? Can I reach the top? Is there a life for me beyond eternity. Will you give me strength to climb the highest hill, with a valley to calm my life down. Push me ever harder. Pull me, make me stronger. Let me feel your love tonight. 

You see I love you and I will always follow you. Oh my father, show the way. If it is obedience you want, I will serve you always, ever always waiting for you to come. 

I can make it if I try. I shall try till die. I love you my father in Heaven.

Learning to Learn, Learning to Hide

Our minds are sponges when we turn them on.  I remember the first person who challenged me about going to college.  It was Lisa Pomin’s mom, Mrs. Petersen.  She was a 4-H leader and I must have been 14 or 15 years old.  The thing my parents did not teach me was how to get through high school, much less that high school was the path to college.  But Mrs. Petersen challenged me and I told her that I would go to college and graduate.

But I did not know how to do it.  I felt so uncomfortable in school and missed so many classes due to harassment and parents who failed to really pay attention to us.  It wasn’t that they were bad parents, they had never been to college.  My father had completed trigonometry in high school and had been accepted into Standford, but he ran off with the Carnival.

There was a history of education in our family on my father’s side, but my mother’s people were longshoremen, Texas oil field workers, truck drivers, and farmers.  Other than being a gifted reader, I was so consumed with hiding from what I was and what people were calling me, that high school slipped by with no real education taking place.

The Mission Training Center was the first time I had ever really engaged in the process of learning and mastering concepts.  I had spent the last 22 months reading all the best books written by General Authorities and members.  The church was new to me and the beliefs were so much fun to learn.  They made me feel important and I was special because I belonged to God’s only true Church.  As a new member, I read A Marvelous Work and A Wonder, Mormon Doctrine, The Miracle of Forgiveness, and on and on.  I read preparing for this time to serve the Lord.

I had never had real success memorizing and mastering skills and concepts.  I was so glamorized with my new life that I found motivation to learn that I had never found before.  I remember getting our first quizzes and discovering that not only did I pass, I aced it.  I was accomplishing things that I never even knew could be accomplished.

The biggest gift the church gave me was a fire for discovery, realizing that I was not stupid and that if I really wanted something I could accomplish it.  I was setting goals and achieving them.  It was almost like those initial years as a Mormon, the church parented me where my parents had failed.  My mom and dad’s marriage was a constant war.  There was a hatred that swelled in my dad and a darkness that to this day I really have no clue where it came from.  My mom was trying to stay alive, she was trying to keep us safe.  That came first and pleasing my dad came first.  There was not a lot of time for her as a full-time working mom to really know how to get us kids through school.

It was really new information for me to get tests back and to see that I could get good grades.  Remember, at this time I was serving a mission, I had not completed my last math requirement.  I was a high school dropout.   I was learning how to learn, I was learning to set educational goals for learning and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Hamming it up for the picture or caught with my zipper down, despite the inner turmoil I was going through I was so happy to be there. It was the first thing I worked on and accomplished. I can’t hate this time in my life. It taught me so much.

I was learning to live a very disciplined life and to bury my homosexuality.  It was going to take that kind of discipline.  I learned how to teach myself not to be gay from my Bishop who recommended the book, ‘The Miracle of Forgiveness’.  There is a chapter that deals with homosexuality and masturbation.  That book and several others were my guidelines for becoming straight as a son of God.

These concepts were new to me.  But after reading my journal, I remember when I first met Elder Carter.  He was so handsome and soft-spoken.  He was my first companion.  But honestly, he was aloof, came from a well-connected Mormon family, and I know he saw right through me. He was kind and treated me decently; he really seemed to be earnest in accepting me and my flamboyant behavior.

I developed one crush at the MTC, it was Elder Barnson.  We went everywhere together.  We would walk around the MTC campus.  I can’t look at his picture without remembering the night I wrote the prayer in my journal.  I realized I was falling for this guy.  It just seemed no matter how hard I tried to push those feelings away, they would flood back in uncontrollably.

I remember looking at the lake out our west-facing window and seeing my reflection, holding my secret in.  I was in love with my first Mormon man.  22 months of kneeling, praying, reading scriptures, writing in my journal, and I was a failure.  I was in love with my second man and even if he wasn’t gay, he would never know it and I would burn in hell for it.

 

I Literally Believed I Had the Power of God: I was ordained and you could trace my priesthood power back to Jesus, talk about feeling special!

Sunday May 5, 1985

I was set apart at the Pleasanton Stake Center by President Anderson. Greg Githens and Bishop Davies came with me for the ordinance. It is hard for me to remember all that he blessed me with. I wrote down two in the fron part of this journal. I fill in the others as I remember them. 

Tomorrow Bishop Davies and I are going to give my mother a blessing, before her operation. I visited her today after I was set apart. I pray she will be happy with her new husband. It must be hard on him with her going to the hospital so soon after wedding. He really loves her, I hope she loves him that much.

Greg was my companion and he went everywhere with me today. I am grateful to him for his sacrifice on my behalf. During fast and testimony meeting Lynda, Greg and Michelle bore their testimonies after I bore mine. Sister Davies said something during her testimony, I can’t remember what it was I just remember how strongly the spirit testified the truth to me of what she said.

I ate dinner with at the Wardleigh’s house. Joy made me a green cake. I also told Michelle I was coming home to her, I don’t know whether or not I will marry her though.

Today I grew, but surely tomorrow I will have to grow again.

May 6, 1985

Today My Companion was Sister Davies. We woke up to the banging on the door by her father at 7 AM, I helped them unload wood from a trailer that Sister Davies dad had brought over. Afterwards she made us a fine breakfast. French Toast and fresh strawberries. We worked around the yard for a few hours then ran me around town to do my last minute errands. One of which was picking up my plane ticket at the post office. It was nice that it came today being that I leave tomorrow morning.

When Bishop Davies came home from work we went to the hospital. My mother is there, she goes into surgery on Wednesday for her back. Bishop Davies and I gave her a blessing. In the blessing I was not inspired to to cease her pain, yet blessed her that she would recover and have a full life. It’s funny how the spirit inspires when you are using the Priesthood.

I also went with Greg to my dad’s house and he and I had cake (Deidre‘s birthday), It was a small party for her 17th birthday We left there and we went to Merrill’s place for a small get together with Scott Sessions, Robin Hunt, Kirsten Zollinger, Merril Prusse, Geoff Hill, Greg Githens, and Michelle. These were (are) the closest friends I have ever had. I love them all.

Today was quite busy.

If I could heal, why did I not heal my Mom?

Looking back at these two entries is rather odd.  You have read the blessing I gave my mom.  Let me just say, there is nothing in that blessing that ever, ever came true.  My mom has had a life of suffering related to her back.  While my mother is a great example of how to love unconditionally any stray dog or broken person she encounters, it was not an example to anyone in my family but me.  My family generally lacks the ability to have insight into their own actions.  It is a family trait, and one that requires a little introspection and acknowledgement that we all make mistakes and we all are learning.

I so wanted this to be true, I lived it every day as if it were true.  I gave it my whole heart and my life.  Like the blessing I gave my mother, there was never any real power there, it was a haven for a lost boy, something to believe in when there was nothing else.

When I read it I find it hard not to chuckle and laugh at my devotion.  Who was that kid, so full of his own shit?

If I had the priesthood power back then, I should have healed my mom.  Really!  What the fuck was I thinking?  Here under my hands was my mother.  She was in pain.  She had recently married Gary Mariani and her back pain was real.  Yet the spirit led me.  It is hard not to look at this and how hopeful I was.  I desperately wanted this to be true.

Tracing My Priesthood to Jesus Christ

When I was set apart as a Missionary, I had already been ordained as an Elder and I held the Melchizedek Priesthood.  I had the power of God and my Priesthood authority could be traced back to Jesus Christ in the following manner:

I, William Dale Sawyer, was ordained by Donald L. Vickers, who was ordained a High Priest in 1969 by Richard L. Warner, who was ordained a high Priest and Bishop by Richard L. Evans in 1959, who was ordained by the Apostle David O. McKay in 1953, who was ordained by Joseph F. Smith (Prophet of God) in 1906, who was ordained by Brigham Young (Mormon Prophet), who was ordained in 1835 under the hands of the Three Witnesses: Oliver Cowdry, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris.

The three witnesses were called by God to choose the Twelve apostles and on February 14, 1835 those men were blessed by the laying on of the hands of the Presidency (Joesph Smith, Jr., Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams.

Joseph Smith, Jr., and Olver Cowdry received the Melchizedek Priesthood in 1829 under the hands of Peter James and John, from the Bible, who appeared to Joseph Smith and the other two witnesses.

Peter, James, and John, the apostles from the Bible were ordained were ordained by The Lord Jesus Christ, see John 15:16.

I literally believed that I held the Priesthood of God.  Can you imagine how heady that was to a guy who spent his entire life without any personal power?  I had God on my side.   God was going to take the gay away, He was going to make me straight.  I even had the Priesthood of God.  No other church on Earth had that Priesthood, and that is what I had been taught.

You know, going from being ostracized to holding the power of God and a room full of friends who had supported me, I was feeling like my life was exploding in front of me.

I had friends.  I belonged, finally I belonged.  You will never know how intoxicating that was.

Some cultural notes:

1. All Mormons are organized into wards of 250 to 500 members, depending on the level of activity in the ward. You would call a ward a congregation.  Collectively, several wards in an area make up a Stake.  Each Stake has a Stake Center, a larger chapel than a ward chapel, with room for 1 to four congregations and offices for Stake leaders.

2. Mormon Missionaries are set apart prior to leaving.  Once you are set apart as a Missionary of the Lord, Mormons believe that Satan will conspire against you and tempt you during this time, so you are not allowed to be alone because he can’t tempt you if you are being protected by another faithful member.

 

The Mormon Guide to Quit Touching Yourself!

If you read through my journal you would see I talk about the ‘Problem’. It is referring to both homosexuality and me learning not to masturbate. I figured a simple look at the speech we are handed at the LDS Mission Training Center would show you just how detailed of an action plan Mormons have and how deeply they work to prevent it from happening. Growing up I thought I was gay because I masturbated. The church fed that fear in so many ways. This may help you understand why this was such a preoccupation of mine.

STEPS IN OVERCOMING MASTURBATION

Mark E. Petersen
Council of the 12 Apostles

Be assured that you can be cured of your difficulty.  Many have been, both male and female, and you can be also if you determine that it must be so.

This determination is the first step.  That is where we begin.  You must decide that you will end this practice, and when you make that decision, the problem will be greatly reduced at once.

But it must be more than a hope or a wish, more than knowing that it is good for you.  It must be actually a DECISION.  If you truly make up your mind that you will be cured, then you will have the strength to resist any tendencies which you may have and any temptations which may come to you.

After you have made this decision, then observe the following specific guidelines:

A Guide to Self-Control:

1. Never touch the intimate parts of your body except during normal toilet processes.

2. Avoid being alone as much as possible.  Find good company and stay in this good company.

3. If you are associated with other persons having this same problem, YOU MUST BREAK OFF THEIR FRIENDSHIP.  Never associate with other people having the same weakness.  Don’t suppose that two of you will quit together, you never will.  You must get away from people of that kind.  Just to be in their presence will keep your problem foremost in your mind.  The problem must be taken OUT OF YOUR MIND for that is where it really exists.  Your mind must be on other and more wholesome things.

4. When you bathe, do not admire yourself in a mirror.  Never stay in the bath more than five or six minutes — just long enough to bathe and dry and dress AND THEN GET OUT OF THE BATHROOM into a room where you will have some member of your family present.

5. When in bed, if that is where you have your problem for the most part, dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your vital parts, and so that it would be difficult and time consuming for you to remove those clothes.  By the time you started to remove protective clothing you would have sufficiently controlled your thinking that the temptation would leave you.

6. If the temptation seems overpowering while you are in bed, GET OUT OF BED AND GO INTO THE KITCHEN AND FIX YOURSELF A SNACK, even if it is in the middle of the night, and even if you are not hungry, and despite your fears of gaining weight.  The purpose behind this suggestion is that you GET YOUR MIND ON SOMETHING ELSE.  You are the subject of your thoughts, so to speak.

7. Never read pornographic material.  Never read about your problem.  Keep it out of mind.  Remember — “First a thought, then an act.”

The thought pattern must be changed.  You must not allow this problem to remain in your mind.  When you accomplish that, you soon will be free of the act.

8. Put wholesome thoughts into your mind at all times.  Read good books — Church books — Scriptures — Sermons of the Brethern [sic, Cistern too?].  Make a daily habit of reading at least one chapter of Scripture, preferably from one of the four Gospels in the New Testament, or the Book of Mormon.  The four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — above anything else in the Bible can be helpful because of their uplifting qualities.

9. Pray.  But when you pray, don’t pray about this problem, for that will tend to keep [it] in your mind more than ever.  Pray for faith, pray for understanding of the Scriptures, pray for the Missionaries, the General Authorities, your friends, your families, BUT KEEP THE PROBLEM OUT OF YOUR MIND BY NOT MENTIONING IT EVER — NOT IN CONVERSATION WITH OTHERS, NOT IN YOUR PRAYERS. KEEP IT _OUT_ of your mind!  The attitude of a person toward his problem has an affect on how easy it is to overcome.  It is essential that a firm commitment be made to control the habit.  As a person understands his reasons for the behavior, and is sensitive to the conditions or situations that may trigger a desire for the act, he develops the power to control it.

As one meets with his Priesthood Leader, a program for overcoming masturbation can be implemented using some of these suggestions.  Remember it is essential that a regular report program be agreed on, so progress can be recognized and failures understood and eliminated.

Suggestions:

1. Pray daily, ask for the gifts of the Spirit, that which will strengthen you against temptation.  Pray fervently and out loud when the temptations are the strongest.

2. Follow a program of vigorous daily exercise.  The exercises reduce emotional tension and depression and are absolutely basic to the solution of this problem.  Double your physical activity when you feel stress increasing.

3. When the temptation to masturbate is strong, yell STOP to those thoughts as loudly as you can in your mind and then recite a prechosen Scripture or sing an inspirational hymn.  It is important to turn your thoughts away from the selfish need to indulge.

4. Set goals of abstinence, begin with a day, then a week, month, year and finally commit to never doing it again.  Until you commit yourself to never again you will always be open to temptation.

5. Change in behavior and attitude is most easily achieved through a changed self-image.  Spend time every day imagining yourself strong and in control, easily overcoming tempting situations.

6. Begin to work daily on a self-improvement program.  Relate this plan to improving your Church service, to improving your relationships with your family, God and others.  Strive to enhance your strengths and talents.

7. Be outgoing and friendly.  Force yourself to be with others and learn to enjoy working and talking to them.  Use principles of developing friendships found in books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

8. Be aware of situations that depress you or that cause you to feel lonely, bored, frustrated or discouraged.  These emotional states can trigger the desire to masturbate as a way of escape.  Plan in advance to counter these low periods through various activities, such as reading a book, visiting a friend, doing something athletic, etc.

9. Make a pocket calendar for a month on a small card.  Carry it with you, but show it to no one.  If you have a lapse of self control, color the day black.  Your goal will be to have no black days.  The calendar becomes a strong visual reminder of self control and should be looked at when you are tempted to add another black day.  Keep your calendar up until you have at least three clear months.

10. A careful study will indicate you have had the problem at certain times and under certain conditions.  Try and recall, in detail, what your particular times and conditions were.  Now that you understand how it happens, plan to break the pattern through counter activities.

11. In the field of psychotherapy there is a very effective technique called aversion therapy.  When we associate or think of something very distasteful with something which has been pleasurable, but undesirable, the distasteful thought and feeling will begin to cancel out that which was pleasurable.  If you associate something very distasteful with your loss of self-control it will help you to stop the act.  For example, if you are tempted to masturbate, think of having to bathe in a tub of worms, and eat several of them as you do the act.

12. During your toileting and shower activities leave the bathroom door or shower curtain partly open, to discourage being alone in total privacy.  Take cool brief showers.

13. Arise immediately in the mornings.  Do not lie in bed awake, no matter what time of day it is.  Get up and do something.  Start each day with an enthusiastic activity.

14. Keep your bladder empty.  Refrain from drinking large amounts of fluids before retiring.

15. Reduce the amount of spices and condiments in your food.  Eat as lightly as possible at night.

16. Wear pajamas that are difficult to open, yet loose and not binding.

17. Avoid people, situations, pictures or reading materials that might create sexual excitement.

18. It is sometimes helpful to have a physical object to use in overcoming this problem.  A Book of Mormon, firmly held in hand, even in bed at night has proven helpful in extreme cases.

19. In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken.  This can also be accomplished by wearing several layers of clothing which would be difficult to remove while half asleep.

20. Set up a reward system for your successes.  It does not have to be a big reward.  A quarter in a receptacle each time you overcome or reach a goal.  Spend it on something which delights you and will be a continuing reminder of your progress.

21. Do not let yourself return to any past habit or attitude patterns which were part of your problem.  Satan Never Gives Up.  Be calmly and confidently on guard.  Keep a positive mental attitude.  You can win this fight!  The joy and strength you will feel when you do will give your whole life a radiant and spiritual glow of satisfaction and fulfillment.

 

I was called by God to New York City until he found out I had a girl friend there….

February 27, 1985

Saturday I received a letter from the President (Spencer W. Kimball, the prophet, seer and revelator of the Mormon Church, at the time I believed he was the living Moses). My mission call has been changed. I have now been called to the Akron Ohio, Mission. There was a question as to the reason for the change being valid. The letter said that I had relatives living in New York, after investigation, I found out it was Judi Clifton, she’s moving back to california right before I report, with that info I called President Anderson and he called the Brethren.

They answered that shortly I would meet someone in Ohio who I was supposed to convert. I go with a feeling of humility or would humbleness be a more accurate feel that the spirit of truths gives.

The call came on March 23, 1985 and will be announced on March 31, 1985. My report date is May 9th, 1985.

What did the all knowing God really know???

I remember the day I got my mission call in the mail.  I had been working toward this one goal for more than a year and a half.  There were a few setbacks along the way.  Even though I was gay, I was never at a loss for girlfriends.  Mormon girls of the 1980’s were bred to be man hunters.  To be a woman over the age of 21 years old and not be married meant you too, could serve God on a mission;  especially since you had not secured a husband, and the best husband to secure is a returning missionary.  And I was leaving on a mission.  There were many girls who wanted to write me while I was gone.  The good thing about being a devout Mormon if you’re straight, is that active Mormon women generally outnumber active number of men.  So it is pretty easy pickings to find a girl or two or three, in my case, who were willing to  wait or write you while you’re gone.

I had many girls who were infatuated with me and I played many along right up until I left.  Of course it was innocent, just kissing and going to church dances.  I had not had sex with another person since I was baptized in 1983.  I had not masturbated at this point, in over one year.  Not once, not at all.  The first year learning to stop touching myself was tough.  At that time I believed that only gay guys masturbated, which was why I was gay.

There were a couple of other setbacks also, one with one of the girls I was seeing.  We were kissing, and that led to heavy petting and that led to me confessing the following week to my Bishop.  You’d think that was enough.  But confessing heavy petting while meeting weekly with your Bishop to discuss your masturbation problem, to make sure I was on the straight and narrow and not being tempted to engage in gay sex had its own brand of cruel punishment.

Mormons have softened their position on masturbation I think.  When I first joined, young boys were asked about it to get a dance card to go to church dances.  There generally isn’t a punishment for masturbation, other than extreme guilt and prayer.  The reason they are so concerned about men and masturbation is because missions are two year commitments where you live 24 hours a day with a fellow missionary.  I will just tell right now I had a few extremely hot companions.  To be honest, most of the guys I served with were pretty fucking ugly, so it was not an issue.

I have all my old confession letters to my mission president.  I will match them to the journal entries as I go, they should be rather insightful.  So you can see, in the 1980’s the church was actively monitoring its missionaries for homosexual activity.  To be fair, it was all sexual activity that they monitored.  Missionaries not only have been sent home for gay sex, there are a great number of strong Mormon marriages born out of sex by missionaries in the mission field.  Mormons are no different when it comes to biological drives that are innate in all of us.  Everyone is born horny, and you can bet 19-23 year-old males on missions are still pretty red blooded.  We used to have a phrase in the mission field that ‘a stiff cock has no conscience’.

Trust me, I did not loosen up as quickly as the missionaries that were serving.  Their parents promised to buy them a car if they completed a mission.  For the first 8-12 months I was a by the book guy, but the reality of the work sets in and in spite of my best efforts I assimilated to a more relaxed LDS mission culture by time I left.  But that will be revealed.

The big story going on at this point was that I received a call from God, yes from God to go to New York.  Judi, who was a bubbly, vivacious, storm of a young woman had taken a job as a nanny in NYC.  Judi and I had a history.  My girlfriend Michelle had reported it to either my Bishop or to the Stake President.  Needless to say, the most exciting thing that ever happened to me to that point was taken from me.

Some all knowing God.  President Kimball had specifically prayed and got an answer that I was to go to New York City.  I had been in love with New York my whole life.  I wanted to go there so badly.  If God had known that Judi was there or planning to go there, why would he change his mind?  I felt cheated, but as you can see I bowed my head and accepted the Lord’s new purpose for me.

I personalized my receiving my calling to serve a mission as if it came directly from God, that is no joke for Mormons.  This is real and it is steeped in tradition.  Mormons believe in a living prophet and his guidance in your life is absolute.

Mormons are taught the leaders directly above them and all the way up the chain to the First President, can and do regularly receive revelations about your direction in life.  Every person in the Mormon Church who holds a volunteer position is presented that job in the following manner, “Donna, as your Bishop, I have prayerfully considered and the Lord has revealed to me that you are to be called to be the Ward’s Relief Society President (the women’s group in the church).

They might not use that exact language, but I wanted the reader to really see how deep a church ‘calling’ is.  Failure to do your church calling is literally failing God.  It is very rare that a Mormon would refuse a church calling.  That would be like telling God ‘no’ to his face.

So my calling from God was real to me at the age of 20.  My 21st birthday was in just a little more than a week away from this entry.

My next entry is five months away……before I jump into the next entry, I do want to discuss my Temple Endowment.  I may have kept a journal that covers these days separately.  If I remember, Michelle, the mother of my children and the woman who waited for me while I served the Lord’s mission, gave me this journal either for Christmas of for my birthday.

Nevertheless, I will look through the other four and see if I documented my first temple endowment.  I remember it perfectly.

Please feel free to ask questions about the culture or Mormon slang, if I forget to explain anything.

 

How do you publish your journal, tell your story and protect the guilty? Was anyone really guilty?

Writing a story about your life in a world that is so connected is challenging.  Everyone is going to be able to figure out who everyone else is, once the family structure is in place, especially if you are publishing a journal covering five years of your life.  The journal, 25 years old, is my account of my life at the time.  They are my views and my witness to the events that I was living through.  There is no way to publish this without people figuring out who is who, even though I have changed the names of extended family members.

I have also changed some of the places and relationships in the narrative that follows each entry.  The only names I am using are my parents, those who have died, my children, and my brothers and sisters.  I guess I could change theirs also, but this is a journal and my thoughts as I publish my journal.  So it will be obvious who they are.

There is no way to write this story without humiliating not only myself, but everyone else.  Everyone in life encounters challenges.  Our family encountered some pretty severe challenges, not just me but every female who was sexually molested or beaten and the boys who were tormented.  For the most part, many of us have survived and thrived.  We each survived, for the most part separate from our family in new lives that have very little connection to each other.  Some of the women have been independent and fostered careers, some have married well and raised good families.  Some of the men have spent time in jail, some run their own businesses, and had some great careers in the oil industry.

For the most part my extended family will see that I write about them as mystery relatives.  In some cases their names are not as important as what occurred or the situation I will describe.  I am leaving the last names off in the journal, unless you were my companion when I was serving a mission.  Since I never had sex with any of my companions in the mission field, the worst thing we did was jump a mission car.  There is likely nothing in those stories that is detrimental to anyone’s life.

This is a story about a family that struggled and loved each other, one where hurt was as common as joy.  My family, the one that surrounded my life, was heavily influenced by my mother and her three sisters.  We called them the ‘Houston Girls’.   They were all beautiful women.  They were sisters who were close and competitive.  They each had married some pretty remarkable men.  All of them had homes in the San Francisco Bay Area, good union jobs, great benefits, and a strong family connection with one another.

There was Gladys, Dana, my mother, and Robin.  My favorite Aunt was Gladys, she was the one who first introduced me to horses.  It was after her that my middle name, Dale, also her middle name, that I was named.  My Aunt Gladys, she reigns supreme in my life.  She was my personal Dolly Parton, she is the one who would rescue me from my dad for weeks at a time when I was a kid.  She would take me and Nora to the beach and to the zoo.  Nora was my cousin, her daughter.  She was the second prettiest girl in the family, the first was my sister.  Gladys had four children and four or five husbands.  In my family we go through men.  I was taught well!

My Aunt Dana was the rich aunt.  She was glamorous and owned a pet store with her husband Robert.  She lived in the fanciest house I had ever seen, and she was the envy of her sisters.  Aunt Dana jetted off to extravagant vacations with her husband Robert.  It was my Uncle Robert who taught me how to tie my shoes.  My Uncle Robert and Aunt Dana were the first to divorce, and when their Camelot ended I cried for days.  My Aunt Dana also had four children, two husbands that I know of and untold life in lovers.  She always had the best taste in men, and she looked fantastic with each of them.

My mother was the prettiest of the ‘Houston Girls’.  She was stunning when she was young, you can see it in her to this day.  She has retained so much of her beauty.  My mom’s beauty was casual and natural when she was young.  Men were always flirting with her.  My mother has always been trusted by others, always accepted people just as they were.  When she was young, she was the life of the party, and she hosted so many.  My mother has a string of marriages to men who were mostly a letdown, until she met Walter.  He is a man of faith and a good life companion for her.  My mother had four marriages and four children.

My Aunt Robin, she was the quite aunt with the Catholic husband.  My Uncle Donald had a dry humor and was always telling a story or making us his famous burritos.  Aunt Robin was perhaps the most modern woman and cool to me because she was still the baby in the family.  Even when I was young, she was the baby. She was pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes and I remember her apartment  and then her home being more modern 1970’s decor.  I never really knew her as well as I knew the rest of my aunts.  She was married one time to Donald and they had three children.  The youngest two I barely know, and the oldest was princess.

All the girls in our family, my sister and all of my female cousins, inherited the beauty of their moms.  When I look back at those years, they were the Camelot years for the Houston Girls, life was pretty stable.  These girls girls had achieved the American Dream, and all of us as their children were doted on and adored.  I know that I am going to write some pretty dark stuff, but it was not dark every day.  Sometimes I think I can trace the destruction of my family to Reaganomics.  I think my family is afraid that I’ll spill the beans on every single issue.  That will not happen.  I want people to see that there was something magical about these people.  My parents and my mom’s sisters’ families were really fun.

We spent every long weekend, every holiday outing, every vacation, together with my mother’s sisters, their husbands, and my cousins during those Camelot years.  There were nights my dad would wake us from a dead sleep to sneak us out to toilet paper our aunts’ and uncles’ tents.  They would retaliate by removing the stakes in our tent.  Practical jokes were as common as milk on the dinner table in our family.

I think for the most part, those who have found peace and happiness in new families they created and new lives are just to scarred to be a part of a connected family.  I know that I will never see my cousins or aunts or uncles again.  The only relative I am in contact with is my mom, weekly, and my brother.  I decided a long time ago that there is nothing for me in my past.  Those people who I spent so many years with are no longer part of my life and I am not a part of their life.  I am OK with that and they are OK with the separation, or we would all be in each other’s lives.

I am changing all the names of the extended family members and the names of people of people that I write about whose lives may be ruined.  I also changed some of the places and relationships.  My cousins have all figured out how to live their lives.

There are some names I am fully OK with using, the guys who punched me in the face, the guys who bullied me and my close family members. I can change their names, but what would be the point. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure this out.

Unfortunately my sister and I don’t speak, that was her decision and I am more than happy to abide by it.  But I cannot take her out of the story of my life.  She is my sister, after all, and her name is written in my journal like all of my family members’ names are.  There are no laws broken by publishing a journal or a life story.  Of course my perceptions, my memories, and my words may be different from accounts that others tell.  We all lived this independently.

Frankly, I am surprised that members of my family are so ‘freaked’ out about this.  My mother, her sisters, and their mother all appeared on the Jerry Springer Show and aired the incest that occurred in our family in front of five million people.

There is no easy way to write a story of your life without people figuring out who they are.  We are all frail and we all falter in life.  I hold no judgement or hatred towards those I write about, and I know that they were likely as scarred as I was.  We should never be embarrassed about our less than stellar moments in life.  We all have moments that are pretty primitive and primal when dealing with emotions of love, anger, and betrayal.  We have all hurt people in our lives, it is just part of being human.

I have always thought that I should write this story.  There was a boy in 1983, named Bobby Griffith, a contemporary peer of mine who lived in Walnut Creek.  We did not no each other.  He was gay and threw himself from a bridge the same year I joined the Mormon Church.  His mother wrote a story that saved my life!

COMING OUT…..

The year I came out, my brother had died many months prior.  I was married and having an affair with a 19 year-old race car driver.  I was laying in bed one night, living a double life as a Mormon husband and gay man.  My brother’s death was sudden and unexpected.  I laid there in torment night after night, looking at my life and the shambles it was in.  I was miserable and unhappy.  I had figured out that there was no God a long time ago, but I was willing to sacrifice my own life for my family’s life.  That is what I told myself, but the constant sneaking to be with Lars (name change) was taking its toll.  It was July of 1999.  I laid in bed night after night thinking about how quickly my brother’s life ended and there was no way I wanted to end my life in a church I stopped believing in a long time prior.

Leaving meant losing everything and everyone I had built in my new Mormon life.  It meant losing my children.  I had tried to stay, but I had stopped believing in the Mormon faith six years earlier.  I had been a Mormon for 17 years of my adult life.  I had friendships and family, and I belonged.  They never hit me or hurt me, and everything I achieved I achieved with the help of the Mormon Church.

The Mormons taught me boundaries that exist within family relationships; boundaries that our family with its history of incest and domestic violence had failed to adequately communicate.  They showed me a better way to live, one that not only included church, but a strong focus on getting an education.  I did the work.  I showed up and was willing to belong, and they welcomed me.

Laying there I began to wish there was a door that I could walk through to end this double life.  It dawned me then that I was depressed and suicidal.  If a client started talking to me about a door to walk through to make all their problems go away, I would start assessing them for suicide thoughts.

The next day I was at my doctor’s and I told him where I was and how depressed I was.  He got me on an anti-depressant and I started to put my life in order so that I could leave.

That decision to leave had taken five years.  That summer it all came to a head and I asked my wife, Shelly, to get a job.  We had always struggled financially and we were both bad at managing money, mostly because we had so little.  It was difficult to take four children and a stay at home housewife through two undergraduate degrees and a masters degree, but we had done it and we were at the best place we had ever been in a lot of ways.  But if I were to leave, she needed to be working.

Mormon women, like Shelly, had been raised that it is a man’s job to earn a living and the Lord will provide.  She had simply refused to work.  She worked when we first got married, she was the main bread winner.  As soon I was earning enough she quit, stayed home and never went back.  It had been a constant source of struggle between us.

The church has softened its stand from those years, but I needed Shelly to understand that she had to get a job.  So I told her in July that if she was not employed by August, I would be divorcing her.  With 33% of my income she would need to find a job to keep a roof over their heads.  I know it sounds cold and calculating, but I was working a plan.  I figured with her working full time plus my 33%, she would have an income a little larger than I had by myself.  It would not be ideal, but she could manage.  It was either walk through one door or the other.  I could no longer live as a gay man in a Mormon household.

Shelly found a medical equipment job that month.  Felicity, our youngest, was was not going to enter school until the following year, so my plan was to leave in one year.  I did not make it.  What happened after that for the most part was kept from me; we were in a bitter custody case and Shelly was not sharing the extent to which she and the kids were suffering.

The battle for our children is a very heroic story; we both compromised our morals in that fight and all of us were extremely damaged. Shelly is still a Mormon, the kids have found their own path away from the Mormon Church.

Looking back at the battle for our kids, I am glad that Michelle and I figured it out together without judges and that we just live by what we agreed to.  It is hard to put into words the way I feel towards Michelle for raising our kids.  She worked her ass for those kids and I simply wrote checks and showed the kids the world.  I got off easy.

In the big battles, it looks like I won.  They all left the church and are not active members, but in the battle for their hearts, Shelly won as she should.  Our kids are all fiercely loyal to their mother and they are very protective of her.  She spent hours taking kids to sports, dance, music lessons, tutors, and of course, to church.

She was with them when they were sick, when their hearts were broken, when they came home from school and when they left.  She made thousands of dinners, wrapped presents, baked birthday cakes, sewed dresses and costumes and got them through school.

I got a get out of jail free card and I was in no place to be a dad during those years.  It would have been so much easier for both of us had my gayness not been an issue for the courts or the Mormon Church, or had we simply gotten divorced in Reno, NV where the judges are blind to the gay issue.  However, Carson City, Nevada and Judge Douglass were quite homophobic!

 

January 8, 1984 to January 11, 1984: Praying the Gay Away……If anyone can pray the gay away, I can, stand back I armed and Mormon!

January 8, 1984

I am not sure if I am going to fully enjoy living here because I really don’t have a friendly relationship with my grandparents. I love them but I don’t know them. I will strive to be an example to them and live the gospel to its fullest.

My Goals are

1. to write in my journal daily

2. pray two times a day

3. read the scriptures

4. stay worthy

5. pay tithing ($4.50 tithing owed)

January 9, 1984

Today I registered at Mount Sac (Mount San Antonio Junior College) I think things are going to work out down here. I am nervous but I can manage because I have the Gospel to help keep things in order. I need to get my car registered and pay my warrant in Livermore. I need to get these things in order. I WILL.  I also went job hunting today and will go again tomorrow the Lord will help me if I keep my faith. I like listening to Anne Murray, she has a good voice.

January 19, 1984

The Lord promises us he will provide if we search diligently. Well I got a job. I will be working at the Good earth. It’s a restaurant in Brea. I will making $3.75 an hour. It is less than what I was used to making but it’s a job. They want me to work Sundays. I know it is wrong but it’s money. Did you see what I just wrote? I am breaking one of the Lords commandments over greed. I have to work to survive. So I will continue to look for another job while I work there. I love the Lord Jesus and Heavenly Father. I hope he can understand me.

I called Elder Green on the phone.

January 11, 1984

11:05 AM I just prayed to Heavenly Father. I know that through prayer I will be able to gain a better communication with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The spirit of warmth takes over my body and relaxes me. I will start praying more often.

Later: The Sister Missionaries came over today. They met my grandparents. I really think my grandparents enjoyed talking to them. They are coming over next Wed. at 2:00 PM. They might teach a discussion.

I got a call from my dad. I have not put it in my journal about their divorce. My mom is living with her boyfriend. It is sort of funny them getting a divorce. I know that they don’t get along, but I also know they let materialistic desires get in the way of their marriage. I will just try to learn from their mistakes. Divorce is wrong the Lord wants us married to enter into his kingdom. I know the values of the Melchizedect Priesthood and the powers it has on the earth in the family unit. I can see my parents mistakes. The Lord will help me avoid them. The Church is true.

January 11, 1984 Later that day….

To My sons and grandsons,

If there is one thing that the advesary works on (it’s) me. It is sex. Girls are beautiful. They allure men usually just for a good time. Stay away from non-member girls they have different backgrounds and looser morals. I am a convert and do know how troublesome woman are, hold to your testimony and let the Lord guide you in your decisions.

My Thoughts:

When I read this, I think about those Southern California days and the fun and excitement.  I remember living so close to the ocean and having new friends who accepted me, who did not ever address my gay problem.  I had no history of being the town faggot with my new friends, and I am barely mentioning them and the fun we had.  I was taking classes at the Institute of Religion and several general education courses at Mount San Antonio Junior College.  It seems like I am leaving off so many details of the richness of that time.

It was a fresh and new time for me.  I had escaped everything that Northern California had meant to me, for good and bad, to the smog-filled air of the Los Angeles Metro.  I was attending a new church, had new friends, and was enrolled in the local general college while I was preparing to go on a mission.  I had a job and I moved in with my grandparents.

We knew our grandparents from afar and life with them was magical.  It was always short in time and fabulous in entertainment.  We would spend two weeks every summer with them.  First Darryl and I would go, and when we got home Duane and Deidre would fly down.  My grandparents would spend the next two weeks taking us to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and Magic Mountain.  My grandmother Sawyer was a grand woman with a flair for fashion and design.  She would speed us down the Coast Highway to San Diego Zoo in her Alpha Romeo with the top down and a scarf holding her head.

My grandfather Garland Sawyer married his bride Vida Vann when they were both older than the times dictated.  They had moved to Southern California shortly after I was born.  They were fancy compared to my mother’s family.  They were educated and my grandfather was employed in the oil industry prior to retiring.  He worked and helped build the oil industry in the Middle East.  He was a frequent flyer, had a secretary and was always traveling around the world.  My grandmother went to school and became a teacher. They did not marry until she was in her early 30’s.

When I say in my journal that I did not know them, I really did not know them.  We spent holidays and summer vacations with them. They had lived all over the country for my grandfather’s work and they had settled in Southern California.  They had been to London, Hawaii, Israel, Egypt, and on and on.  My grandparents were grand.  They were larger than life and they lived lives of travel and excitement.  Whenever they were on a trip we waited for them to bring us trinkets from the places they went.

Most of what I learned about them I learned while I lived there and went to school.

Boy, was I a little focused on the church in my journal.  It’s like it is mostly about how I fit the gospel in my life or struggled with it.  The tribute to my sons and grandsons and my goal to stay worthy indicate how often I was struggling with my sexuality.  The summer before I joined the Mormon Church I was quite sexually active.  A close girlfriend and I had a bet to see who could sleep with the most people.  She won with over 30 guys bedded, and I came in with a whopping 19 girls in one summer.  Of course I did not include the guys I had been fooling around with.

One of these guys and I had actually fallen in love with each other despite the girls on our arms.  We were on a sledding family trip my junior year of high school, and he and I were bunking alone together.  We were alone in the same room, in the same bed, in our underwear.  It wasn’t long before we were naked and touching each other and trading blow jobs.  That had mostly been my sexual experience with guys up to that point, but this was different.  We reached out to each other and we kissed and hugged. Our touch was tender and sensitive.  We made love and we both knew it.

Our families were close, not the type of closeness that develops from actually knowing each other, but our families had so many families in common that we ended up at the same family events and employer parties.  Though they lived in a different city, they were also active in 4-H and Future Farmers of America.  Our families’ paths crossed often.

As soon as we were alone, we would go off and spend hours alone hiking, smoking, drinking, talking and making love.  It was love, an unspoken love.  We saw each other in San Ramon several years after we were both married.  His parents had a graduation party for a younger son.  While our wives were talking in the kitchen, we went out to the garage and he cried as he told me how much he missed me.  He was living in Washington state.  There was a party going on in the backyard and we were alone.  I was so wrapped up in my religion and wanting to be good, as he told me of his life.  He had robbed a liquor store and had several warrants out for his arrest in California.  He was living  in a mobile home park with his wife and two kids.  Their lives were pretty desperate.  My heart reached out to him and I held him.  He held me back.  He was just an inch shorter than me, but in that moment I towered over him.

Not because I was tall, but to him I had rid myself of that evil we both shared.  I was married in the Mormon Temple, working as a pharmaceutical sales representative, driving a company car with a two kids and a third on the way.  He was broken, sad, and lost.  I was holding him as I had so many years ago, I brushed his deep black hair to the side and behind his ears and then it happened.  Our eyes met in that way that we both knew was beyond our control.  He was in my arms, I lowered my head to his and kissed him.  It filled me with sheer excitement and terror.  That kiss lasted just long enough.  I stammered, “I’m sorry”.  I stepped back and looked at him.  What had I done?  I thought.  Then I heard his words, “Dale, I love you”.  I told him I had to go, and left the garage.  I gathered my wife and kids and we left.

There was a longing in that kiss and there was the shocking truth.  This constant craving from men was never going to go away.  I stood there soiled in the eyes of God, not just in my thoughts but in my actions.  How could I face my next Temple interview, how could I face my wife and kids, what had I done.  I was trembling and shaking.

I never saw him again.  He died addicted to meth and HIV positive at home with his wife and kids.  His youngest sister had married a guy in our class and at our 20 year reunion she shared his story with me .  I used to fantasize about him often.  Instead of running that day from him, we would run away together.  It was a theme that developed the longer I was Mormon.

The nights you pray in vain to God to remove the most beautiful part of who you are, are nights spent in vain.  I spent 17 years of my adult life praying for the best part of me to go.  Prayers that went unanswered, no matter how hard I prayed.  I was still gay.  What made me this evil?  Why me?  Why do I have to be this way?  I would read the scriptures, write in my journal, bare my testimony, go to church with my wife and kids.  I was doing everything.  Look at what my life could have been, it could have been.

I was on a path to wild nights and dangerous drug filled parties, group sex, and guns.  One night, a guy I met in Hayward through a girl I was dating did a three-way.  After we finished, we walked out into the party and a gun was pulled and pointed directly at the guy I had just traded fucks with, and his girlfriend.  He had just gotten out of prison and there was a skirmish.  No one was shot, but I had pushed the limits in the bedroom with him just moments before.  You know, asking the dude to stroke my balls while I drilled her, to pulling his cock out of her mouth and into mine.  There was no other sex play between us, but the sight of the gun pointing at him after I had just sucked his cock left me freaked out.

My life was heading to where his life ended and that kiss, that embrace, brought all that to my doorstep.  All the secret masturbatory sessions and business trips spent jacking off to gay porn in hotel rooms, all of it came flooding back to me.  I ran.  My wife, my kids, my middle class life, all shiny and clean were waiting for me.  It was only a kiss.  No one ever needs to know about a kiss.  I kiss my kids all the time.  He was an old friend in a bad place, we simply shared a moment of tenderness.  The years of fighting were taking a toll and I was slipping.  I knew I was.  I was never going to win this fight.