When Bryan Egnew came out, his wife left him and took his five kids. And then…
Within two weeks, Bryan was excommunicated from the LDS Church. From the perspective of Mormon doctrine, his excommunication severed Bryan’s relationship to his children not only in this life, but also in the hereafter.
Alone in his home in North Carolina, Bryan was devastated. His parents flew out to be with him, then brought him back to Arizona for intensive treatment for depression.
After a few weeks of therapy, Bryan convinced his parents and his therapist that he was stable enough to return home to North Carolina, so he could look after the family home. Back in North Carolina, on Saturday, September 10, Bryan bought a gun at Wal-Mart. He fed the family’s animals, cleaned the house, handed the keys to a neighbor, sent a message to a family member that they needed to come to the house, and then went on the front lawn and shot himself.
My heart breaks.
Yes, but he chose to be Mormon……
A dick statement, yes. But far more accurate than anyone who states that he (or anyone else) chose to be gay.
@2 you suck.
Note: Just because some religious nut claims it happens, doesn’t mean it does.
Note: If your friends can’t accept who you are, then they are not your true friends.
Note: Family is only friends with genetic connections, they are no more important that.
Note: This is the brainwashing effect that’s not only the fault of organized religions, but society itself.
@ 2, more of a dick statement than you can know. Being raised Mormon means being socially conditioned to an extent that goes beyond mere “choice.” It’s just a step removed from abuse IMO.
If he converted, that would be one thing. But he didn’t.
@ 4, glib statements don’t change deep familial ties. Nice attempt at molding reality to fit your viewpoint, though.
Mormons should be banned like pit bulls.
Some adults never realize that their lives are their own and they have a right to be happy.
So much agree with @5. Read the whole story – this guy had been force-fed the Koolaid from birth, it was his whole life.
Sad, yes, but 2 just said what all should be thinking. this guy lived 2 very big lies thru 22 years of adulthood, then very publicly decided to make everyone feel sorry for him. Boo hoo. We should be sad for those who witnessed and had to clean up the mess.
@Matt – Glib statements are all that KittenKoder is capable of making because they generate the most attention.
That’s so sad and such a waste- he could’ve gone onto live a full life if he’d been able to get the right kind of help. I don’t know too much about the Mormon faith, but what from what I’ve heard it’s very, very difficult to leave- the reason being that leaving doesn’t just mean finding a new church. It means finding a brand new community with new friends, possibly a new “family”, a new job and a new place to live. Basically it means starting over completely alone and without very much experience outside of the Mormon lifestyle and community. So not only would it be a tremendous amount of culture shock, but it would also mean feeling completely ostracized, alienated and isolated and probably without the outside-world social skills needed to reach out for help. It makes me think of an abused wife trying to leave a bad marriage- it’s not as simple as just packing your things and leaving when you’ve been emotionally battered and shamed your whole life. There’s a real-world coping skills set deficit that makes it incredibly difficult to stand on your own. Really tragic.
OK, hold on. This is a grown man we’re talking about here, a person who joined a faith that was utterly contrary to his own nature. He also married (and deceived) a woman with whom he had five children. We’re not talking about a defenseless kid from some Louisiana backwater infested with drooling bigots, dealing with a situation that has arisen through no fault of his own…this guy completely and totally set himself up for this.
I mean, really. The ex-communication, the wife leaving…these were inevitable results of his coming out. You have to reach to call this “bullying”…certainly you can’t blame his wife for leaving him. I know I’d be pissed if I had five kids with my wife and she up and left me for another woman. You can’t really blame the Mormons even…they are straight-up with their anti-gayness…was he expecting them to welcome him with open arms? How did he expect to cross the river on the back of that particular scorpion?
It’s sad and tragic that he set himself up for this fall, but he did, in fact, set himself up. His suicide, while awful, doesn’t change that.
I just read in the comments on that website that if we truly believe being born a certain way allows the people born that way to do what they want, then we’d have to legalize serial murder because serial murderers were “born that way”.
I think I’m going to go throw up now.
I’m not really sure what the solution is supposed to be in this case. It wouldn’t even be enough for the Church of Latter Day Saints to butt out of government policy and to not try to keep same sex marriage illegal? Mormons now have to change their position on gays even within their own dogma?
So, in other words, the fundamentalists’ claims about the “gay agenda” are correct: Dan (at least) wants to dictate how they practice their own religion.
I also agree with #13 that calling this “bullying” is a stretch. Excluding someone from your club because you don’t like them isn’t bullying.
Were other Mormons sending him death threats or egging his house? No? Then it wasn’t bullying.
13, He didn’t join a faith. It was the family’s religion by which he was raised (read brainwashed). He knew his own people would not accept him as a gay man, so he desperately tried not to not be gay. Mormon’s don’t accept that homosexuality is an innate trait, and preach that being gay is one of the worst things a person can be. Nobody wants to be rejected by their family and friends, so he did what he could to fit in. It never works.
@13, I invite you to consider a world where not everyone operates upon a strict rationality that can defy years of socialization through sheer will.
I agree with @13. This isn’t a vulnerable pre-teen at the mercy of his or her homophobic parents; this is a 40-fucking-year-old man and father of five who should have been thinking about his own kids before he blew his brains out.
I regret that it happened, but I don’t blame the LDS for this. Like any religion or any group for that matter, they have an absolute right to kick out whomever they want.
@ 19, after they way they build up their entire world?
LDS isn’t like other faiths. The church is nearly the entire universe for its members.
The fact that it took this guy until 40 to finally come out of the closet should be a clue as to how hard it was for him.
“Bullying” of course is too strong a word; but besides getting your attention, it’s a good parallel to the psychological fucking-over this man received for his entire life.
@2 and everyone else who is blaming the man: Perhaps it isnt as simple as blaming the church or blaming the man. Maybe, just maybe, there is a middle road where the two of these things combine in a perfect storm of church indoctrination and lack of support from loved ones. It is a sad story, and unless you understand what being LDS really means and what that actually looks like, then you may want to sit this one out.
@17/18: Well, let’s turn that around then. The adult LDS members who supported Prop 8 and fight against marriage equality throughout the U.S are just doing what their religion tells them to do. They’re just “fitting in” with the dictates of the church, so they can’t be to blame for not “operat[ing] upon a strict rationality that can defy years of socialization through sheer will.”
They were socialized to be anti-gay through the “family’s religion by which [they were] raised (read brainwashed).” So their financial backing of various anti-gay organizations is totally not their fault: it’s how they were raised! Agree?
IMO, adults are responsible for the bullshit they believe and the consequences for those beliefs. I am completely on-board with protecting the young and the vulnerable, but there comes a time where you have to own your actions.
@20: My comment at 22 applies to you as well.
If you can’t expect a Mormon who is actually gay to challenge the Mormon orthodoxy on their anti-gay bias, then it seems you can’t blame the straight rank-and-file Mormons for not challenging the same orthodoxy either.
@21,
His parents were at least supportive enough to get him treatment for depression. And, sorry, but I’m not going to blame his beard for getting pissed off. That’s an understandable reaction no matter what religion they practice.
y’all can be some cold ass motherfuckers sometimes..
yeah… religion is stupid blah blah blah..easy to say when you’re outside of it. but inside can be different kind of hell. every decision is colored by it, whether you choose it or not, and this man didn’t choose it.. he married and had kids because he desperately wanted to be ‘normal’, to fit in. tried and couldn’t do it..so he came out and, according to this account, he lost whatever happiness he could have hoped for in this and his ill perceived afterlife. i’m guessing he felt sorry for his parents, wife , his kids, probably thought his entire existence was one huge cosmic mistake and removed himself from it. and not even a sympathetic r.i.p. for him.
i’m also going to hazard a far reaching guess that for those he left behind in the faith mixed in with the tragedy is the lesson that , the proof, that homosexuality is wrong wrong wrong.
..there but for the grace of god, go i..
@6 “Family ties” are a social creation, no more. Learn something from anthropology on the matter, fascinating science really, the family units we have today are actually very new.
@22: That’s not a good analogy. Supporting Prop 8 did not put your church membership (or your eternal salvation) in jeopardy, and would not have resulted in condemnation and ostracism from your family and friends. Acknowledging one’s homosexuality does all of these. Homosexuality is, according to at least one Mormon “prophet,” blasphemous, a crime against nature, enslaving, and evil.
@24..’His parents were at least supportive enough to get him treatment for depression’
unless he was treated by a mormon counselor. which means that his ‘treatment’ exacerbated his condition.
@25 I’m with you. I have nothing but sympathy for that poor man and his now doubley fatherless kids.
@28: The church has said that you shouldn’t go to a counselor who believes guilt is a bad thing. So, you feel guilty, which results in depression, and then your counselor reinforces the guilt. Sounds like a winning strategy to me.
I went to an LDS Family Services counselor once. What a waste of time. He wasn’t interested in my experiences and needs but rather in keeping to the party line.
@2
If choice of ethos is so much a matter of free-will, why do very so many practice the religion of their parents or alternatively the religion of the socially dominant?
There is exactly the same act of will in choosing to possess one sort of belief as there is in deciding to be an alcoholic–that is, not very much at all.
It is not that I don’t believe an act of will is possible, merely that it is extremely difficult and rare.
@27: My point is that adults are either responsible for their religious choices or they aren’t. If adults are responsible, then this 40-year-old should have gotten out of the LDS in his early 20s, before he entered a sham marriage. If adults are not responsible, then the 40-year-old is off the hook but so are the Mormons who donate to prop 8 and other anti-gay causes.
You can’t have it both ways. Again, I feel for this man and especially his children, but I can’t blame the LDS because it was ultimately his decision to stay a Mormon, stay closeted, and kill himself once he could no longer live a lie. Just like I blame individual Mormons for their decisions to support anti-gay hate groups.
@31: “It is not that I don’t believe an act of will is possible, merely that it is extremely difficult and rare.”
That.
Mormonism isn’t just religion, but a way of processing reality. For a lot of us, questioning Mormonism was like questioning reality. We were taught that Mormonism explained everything, and if what we were or did or thought conflicted with the church, the problem was with us. There is no place in Mormon theology for homosexuality. The ultimate destiny of humanity lies in Godhood, which is predicated on heterosexual union.
The notion that one can simply use critical thinking skills to get out is not realistic, particularly when one has been taught since birth not to think critically about Mormonism.
Amen @25. Religion kills, even if chosen voluntarily. When one’s entire life in both this world and the next is doomed due to something involuntary (gayness), one spends a lot of time believing the bullshit religion dishes out. Those who have not given their lives to god and its teachings don’t know what they’re talking about.
I know it seems silly to many people, but these folks believe all that they’re taught and told about gayness. I *voluntarily* became a fundie at 16. 13 years later I finally worked up the despair to leave that system. But it has taken 25 YEARS to only partially undo all the damage their lies did to me. Some part of me is still waiting for the thunderbolt from the blue. Had I had an ex-wife who took my kids from me and refused to allow me to see them because of gay, I’m not sure whom I’d have killed first- myself or her. DO NOT TAKE A PERSON’S CHILDREN FROM HIM/HER- instincts kick in that have been in our make-up since before our ancestors were even gerbils. Yet religion teaches that that is the proper thing for a parent to do, should the other one be teh gay.
RIP poor man. I wish I could have talked to you before you ended yourself.
@32: Of course we’re responsible for our decisions in the end. However, leaving Mormonism isn’t that easy or simple. It took me 40 years to allow myself to even consider that the LDS church might not be true. I consider myself to be a reasonable adult with average critical thinking skills, but for years I had a blind spot for my religion. That’s because I was taught to have that blind spot. Simply put, it was literally unthinkable that the church might not be true. To acknowledge that possibility is to risk the collapse of your worldview entirely. Add to that the loss of family and friends, and it’s a hell of a hard thing to do.
@32 you’re missing the part where he DID decide to come out.. 20 years too late for you ? adulthood isn’t some magical thing that happens for everyone in their 20’s, where decisions and logic suddenly fall into line and voila you are now a fully formed realized person.his marriage was a sham , enabled by his entire worldview and everyone around him, including church, counselors, parents, wife and maybe his own children.
but you’re right, terribly correct in this singular instance, you can’t have it both ways. which is why we struggle to keep church and state affairs separate .. so the rest of us don’t have to be affected with their infections.
@32 – there a difference between the “blame” of which you speak and taking someone to task for their actions. I don’t blame Personal mormons for the prop 8 mess, so to speak. I blame the doctrine. The supporters in both cases are victims. But one set if victims can and should be taken to task for their actions while the other shoul not. In both cases, though, yes, I want the personal Mormon to change their mind, with hopes that the doctrine will follow.
You argue that there is no difference between the bullied kid/adult who can’t take it anymore and commits suicide and the bullied kid/adult who packs a gun in their lunch.
@36 @32 you can have it both ways because there IS a difference. One person is a victim. When you feel guilty all your life, that takes a toll on you. You are different, by 40, ten someone who is a “normal” mormon.
@38: Yep. You can’t compare the average Mormon with one who has been taught since birth that his or her very existence is an affront to God.
@32 I’m deaf and I’ve had deaf people tell me basically the same thing about the community I choose as you are with a person religion. I’m guessing this guy is a **cradle** Mormon so it’s not altogether a matter of just waking up one day and deciding to believe Joseph Smith. What goes really, really deep with Mormons is that unlike any Christian-oriented culture, one’s ties with Mormons is all-consuming because that’s how the church organizes thing. Mormon regularly say that being a Mormon is like have a second full-time job. When you’re not working for your daily bread, you have duties to your church you have to really work hard to fulfill and along with those duties came an immersion into a lifestyle and social culture that no other Christian group in this country can image. So, if you’ve only know the LDS Church from infancy, yeah, it’s going to be painful to break away from it. I know it. I did it. And it was my great good fortune to no lose my child in the deal. This guy lost FIVE kids in the deal *and* a social network that covered a lifetime. There’s always someone around to tell you that you made the wrong choice and my deaf friends pointed fingers at me for not choosing a lifelong social network of those who use sign language to communicate. In short, the took my decision to live among hearing people as some kind of insult to them. They neither understood nor respected my decision. So, since you don’t have the compassion for this man, nor have you walking in his shoes, please spare us the finger-pointing. It’s ugly.
@37/38: Actually, there’s a pretty big difference between the bullied kid who can’t take it anymore and the bullied adult: one is a kid and the other is an adult. That’s why the 13-year-old who kills himself is a victim, and the 13-year-old who kills others should not be tried as an adult. And that’s also why the 40-year-old who kills himself is not a victim, and the 40-year-old who kills others should go to jail for fucking life (or get a needle in his arm, if you support capital punishment).
Honestly, it sounds like the group of people who “should be taken to task for their actions” is just the group whose actions you disagree with. Surely you see how someone on the other end of the issue could use your same reasoning to efficiently disregard all of your “task taking.”
@32 Consider this: a good friend of mine, who happened to be mormon, decided in high school he didnt want to be mormon anymore. Here is what happened: parents disowned him and kicked him out of the house, church ex-communicated him and he was not allowed to speak or interact with his younger siblings. He ended up living in his car and on peoples couches while finishing his remaining two years of high school. Luckily, he is now a normally adjusted individual. However, that is what you are up against in the church of lds. It is a ruthless organization in which compassion for anyone is based solely on whether or not they are following the rules. I have seen it with my own eyes. I hope, since you are judging, that you have faced similar circumstances that this man faced, and managed to come out alright. Otherwise, you really dont know what you are talking about.
@40: Where did I say I lacked compassion for this man? Check @32 again:
My point is that I refuse to lay this at the feet of the LDS. They can kick out whomever they want, and I’ve yet to see anyone argue to the contrary.
@43: I think it’s fair to lay such a death at a religion that has taught, “Loss of virtue is too great a price to pay even for the preservation of ones life – better dead clean, than alive unclean. … Please believe me when I say that chastity is worth more than life itself. This is the doctrine my parents taught me; it is truth. It is better to die chaste than to live unchaste. Many is faithful the Latter-day Saint parent who has sent a son or a daughter on a mission or otherwise out into the world with the direction: ‘I would rather have you come back in a pine box with your virtue than return alive without it.'”
Something I wrote a few years ago that describes the experience many of us had in leaving Mormonism:
http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_exmor…
I feel for him, but he is a grown man. Having been raised Mormon myself I know how painful it is to leave and break free when all your friends and family are in the Church, and the pressure they will continue to put on you for years after. It’s a cult, and it sucks, but it is possible, as an adult, to get out and leave.
It’s really unfortunate that he wasn’t able to leave the Church earlier, or come to terms with his own nature. And the way his wife reacted is horrible, but I don’t think this is anywhere near on par with the kids who are inflicted with torment that *they have absolutely no control over*.
This guy wasn’t legally obligated to go to Church. He chose to go. Kids have to go to school and be around the bullies. Not only that, they’re kids. He’s a grown up.
It’s tragic and sad but I don’t like the parallel.
You know it’s really difficult for some people to break free from the bonds of thier religion/cult. It really bugs me when people say, “I stopped believing at 14… What’s his problem?” It may have been easier for you, it was certainly different. This guy was a victim of a philosophy that condemned him, so I cut him some slack. I cut kids more slack, and don’t have much slack at all for a white, male, heterosexual, jock who wants everyone else to be exactly like him (via prop 8 or via ostricizing family members).
@43 I think your lecture on wrong choices is indicative of a lack of compassion. Pointing out alleged faults with his choices is not what jumps to my mind when I hear about a suicide.
Another thing that I won’t bawl you out over is that excommunication in the LDS is a far more complex process than merely kicking people out on some implied whim. There is a gut wrenching reconciliation process many gays go through that is too complex to go into here but when you’ve been a Mormon your entire life and are having trouble in church, you’d do just what lots of gay Mormons do and try to use that reconciliation avenue to maintain your standing in the church. It involves talking about your conflict with elders and going into excruitiating detail about your emotional life. Elders are hearing these stories more and more these days and hearing them is making it harder and harder for many of them to come down on the side of the church. I’ll bet you this poor guy went through that process and was hammered by the elders along with loosing his kids and his social network. It’s no time for finger pointing. I wish I could have been there for him.
@26: “@6 “Family ties” are a social creation, no more. Learn something from anthropology on the matter, fascinating science really, the family units we have today are actually very new.”
Oh Christ, just because society CAN be different does not make unmake a specific person’s existing social conditioning and psychological abuse. Don’t tell others to “learn anthropology” when you’re spouting pseudoanthropology.
@13, Sure he may have lived a lie, but the reason he was so distraught was likely because he thought he would never see his 5 kids again. Certainly you can’t blame his wife for divorcing him, but taking someone’s children away is a wound not likely to heal. He lived that lie because he was taught all his life that it was the “right” thing to do.
@22 Alright so it’s been a while since I last logged in and I think many people (Rev. Dj, in-frequent, Out in Bum F) have covered points I was going to make, but I do want to address one particular issue you raised:
I would call their financial backing of anti-gay organizations many things, unsurprising, harmful, regressive- but I wouldn’t recommend spending time attempting to pin down exactly where blame attaches to these agents of intolerance- you’ll go mad.
Let me be as clear as I can: I am not saying that the men and women who administer and support anti-gay efforts in this country aren’t our concern- they most absolutely are. But I don’t see any reward in attempting to distinguish between the agent and the structure they support, neither can exist without the other. For me, the only question is: what are we going to do to combat it?
Some day gay equality will be realized in this country. When that day comes, what would you do with those who unsuccessfully fought against it? I am perfectly content to allow them to become the Hiroo Onodas of their time- disheveled, embarrassed, and disconnected from the machine that once informed their beliefs.
@26 Race is a social construct, does that make it any less ‘real’ for victims of racism?
@13: Having to live a lie that could have been avoided for his entire life and avoiding so much heartache for everyone involved? This is spiritual bullying, and if you sincerely believe in an afterlife, it would affect you just as much as the schoolyard pranks. People who suffer from abuse deserve our sympathy on many levels.
It’s a very sad story. I shudder to think that it very well could have been me if i had been unlucky enough to follow my bishop’s and family’s encouragement to get married in my early 20s. Coming out (withOUT kids/wife) was the hardest thing i ever did in my life, but thank god i did.. Before coming out, i was also depressed at the dead-end, no solution hand life seemed to have dealt me.
I consider the church’s influence on the way i was raised child abuse plain and simple.
Mormonism isn’t an ordinary religion in the sense that we understand one. It is an extreme example of totalitarianism, under central command, based on a religious dogma. It is so intertwined with the ordinary lives of its members that it can coerce and destroy them if they stray. And so intrusive, that privacy and personal autonomy are seriously compromised.
If it wasn’t so big, it’d be on the radar as a dangerous cult.
@50 Thank you! Most of you are missing the point completely. OK, the Mormon church are within their rights to say he can’t be in their club any more. I can understand his wife never wanting to see him any more – I cut my ex out of my life for less. But to take the man’s children away is just evil! This damn cult made sure coming out meant losing the children he loved, and that isn’t a question of theology. That’s just pure evil.
@3,
#2 is accurate. Religion is a choice. Sexual orientation is not.
Does anyone know if the LDS’s stance on suicide Is the same as mainstream Christianity?
Just as a rhetorical question, what is the LDS stance on divorce?
Peace.
This is so sad.
I feel for his situation. I didn’t grow up Mormon but I did grow up Jehovah’s Witness and there are a lot of similarities when it comes to their beliefs/views.
If you haven’t been a part of such a life-encompasing religion, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about in regard his ability as an adult to leave.
I think sharing my experience might help some of those lacking empathy…
I didn’t leave until I was 32. I wish I could have left earlier but when you’ve grown up in such a religion (read indoctrinated/conditioned), where it is your entire life/existence, you believe the rhetoric that if you pray hard enough you can stop being gay. That you just need to meet the right girl, etc, etc. I considered suicide constantly but never went through with it ‘cos it was an unforgivable sin. Leaving would mean I’d be ‘disfellowshiped’, my friends would no longer be able to contact me and would shun me if they saw me on the street. Family is encouraged not to contact you in order for you to learn your lesson, knowing that if you don’t come back you won’t be resurrected with them (read afterlife). Remember too that since any outside social interaction is discouraged you don’t have other friends or support structures outside. On reflection, maybe I was too chicken but the pressure was unbelievable. These were always good reasons to ‘renew my faith’, pray more and to try again to get rid of my gay thoughts.
In any case, praying didn’t help and it took one particularly suicidal evening and nine months of concerted effort to finally break free from them… I ended up leaving the area so that they couldn’t find me or run into me.
My point is that it was far from easy to finally leave such a life and whilst I did, I could have also easily found myself in this poor guys shoes. RIP Bryan.
I grew up in a Mormon town. The level of control they had over their members was awesome to behold, and not in a good way. They all make a decision at about 14-15 (when seminary starts) and it was always apparent who had decided to swim in the church waters and who thought that everything was a joke/didn’t take it too seriously. There were a lot of not-pretty euphanisms for the change us non-Mormon kids saw in our Mormon friends.
I can’t say absolutely, because I knew NO gay Mormon kids (did know of, more on that in a second) — either they were expertly closeted or they were shipped out of town. (I’m not really sure. I’ve heard about the ‘camps’.) But, being gay was definitely a big problem, and it’s no stretch of my imagination that the church’s operating methods could drive someone to believe that suicide, a mortal sin itself, would be more easily forgiven than homosexuality. I understood, living there, that so long as you could wear the mask, you were accepted, supported and given what you needed from the community. There was a sincerely lack of genuine destitution in my town. I didn’t see extreme poverty until I left (and I was definitely horrified). There are so many POSITIVE reinforcements as well as the negative reinforcements that being gay was just….not an option.
I do have a friend I think was bi, and his older brother was gay. The family, fortunately, was fractured, and the older brother had a non-Mormon home to escape to. But it took me a long time to find out about this mysterious older brother — only my friend spoke of him, and only then when no one else was around. I think there was ONE picture of the guy in a house FULL of family phots. My suspected bi-friend mostly hangs out with non-Mormon friends. But I bring this up to illustrate a point — these folks have a non-Mormon safety net. It sounds like the guy in the article had NOTHING but the church in his life.
If you were hanging off a cliff, by your neck, and knew you would either suffocate, or you could choose to drop to your death — which would you choose? Because that’s exactly what sort of choice this man seemed to have.
Let’s not let the LDS debate distract us from the fact that stuff like this happens all the time in non-religious custody and access cases: the wife took the kids and hightailed it out of state, where she will be supported by her friends, family, church and social organizations in doing so. Further, those same people supporting her would be telling his kids that they were better off without him.
What’d he have left? A whole lot of nothing. No wonder he ate a gun. A lot of men do that, or their souls just die. Somebody else made the arbitrary decision that because he was Wrong he was no longer even a father, and that was that. Sad, sad, sad.
@60: Secular families rarely “disconnect” a person from their children without actual abuse involved.
This is an issue of Fundamentalism, to the link is justified. It’s not as much of a cut & dry fathers’ rights case.
If you’d gone to school with Joanna Brooks and known her, as I did, then Dan you might have realized that the source for your post wasn’t the most reliable. And her sources are even less-so. But perhaps it’s not important for you to get the facts straight. It’s just enough to attack the Mormon church because of their position on prop 8 and belief that gay sex is a sin.
I’m not Mormon, but friends and family are. One of these friends is an active, gay Mormon. He is not closeted. And he lives in Utah. Other homosexuals who are active Mormons have received positions of authority in the LDS church. You could have looked at Joanna’s own blog to find examples, like this:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispat…
There are many views by individual Mormons on homosexuality. The policy of the church itself is NOT to excommunicate gays. The story as given rings entirely false. It’s a very involved process to excommunicate someone. According to friends who are in leadership positions, an excommunication in two weeks, as the post states, is near impossible. The real story, according to friends of the family, is much more tragic and complex involving someone who had already come out to his wife years before and who was cheating on his wife and abusing drugs.
Liberal Mormon friends and gay Mormon friends are frustrated by people like yourself who just want to be provocative. They believe there are many aspects of their church that need to be reformed, but when circumstances get mis-represented, it does more harm than good for the cause. As more facts become public in this case, conservative Mormons and those opposed to liberalizing the Mormon church’s policy on homosexuality and gay marriage, will point to this as an example of how the media, liberal activists, and gay activists can’t be trusted.
I would guess his wife leaving him and taking the kids had more to do with his killing himself than the excommunication, and I wouldn’t consider his wife leaving him to be “bullying”. She was lied to and had a right to leave. This story is extremely sad, but I wouldn’t attribute his death to bullying.
I think this used to be so common that, even outside of religion, this is one of the main ways gay men died in the old days, until AIDS came along to replace it. Now, social ostracism (leading to suicide) is returning to become one of the ways gay men and boys are dying again. It may prove impossible to scrub every subculture (ethnic, religious, institutional) of this death-urge.
@15 I don’t know that Dan wants to dictate how other people’s religion operates, but I do. When they cause death, they should lose their right to operate as previously operating. Believe what you want, until you cause someone to die.
Let’s see-
Pit Bulls, Christians, Mormons, anyone slightly to the right of Karl Marx in politics…
Little Danny Boy the Savage is working up quite an impressive list of things to be ignorant but verbose about. I guess he’s an eclectic bigot.
As for this gentleman, one can feel sorry for his family and for his death without linking it to his church or his chosen homosexuality.
And who the hell calls a family member to make sure that person sees their body lying in the yard after s self inflicted gunshot? Talk about supreme selfishness. I’d say that apart from being gay and depressed this gentleman just may have had other mental health problems.
@66: Who severs a man’s contact with his children just because his sexual orientation offends someone’s delicate sensibilities? Talk about supreme selfishness.
Seattleblues, and do you really have to imitate the model you describe, while not imitating the man you criticize?
To say nothing of your disregard for the pain of a 40-year-old man who saw no alternative to suicide. I wonder if your personal savior would also have lavished snark on him?
Ah, SB. You should pray that your religion is wrong; because, if it is right, you are going to have a hell of a time in your afterlife…
@66: I thought you only used nick names for your friends Seattleblues.
Why the hell is it either/or?
Yes, a 40 year old is responsible for his own choices. And yes, a vulnerable 5, 10, or 15 year-old who is bombarded with messages that they are damned, doomed, and hateful to God and every person they know and love is being bullied. Horribly bullied.
Does it only count as bullying if you kill yourself? We wouldn’t argue that a 16 year-old Mormon who killed himself was a victim of intolerable institutional bullying. But if the same 16 year-old doesn’t kill himself, but mangles himself into an intolerable life, denying himself every possible happiness in order to fit into the rules because that’s all he knows, and then crumbles under the pressure, oh well, too bad, it’s all his fault?
Seriously, do you people run around telling rape survivors that if it didn’t kill them, it must not have been all that bad?
Or is it that utter rejection of religion in all its forms trumps any compassion for anyone?
While I agree that calling this bullying is a stretch, having been involved in the Unification Church, or the Moonies as they were commonly called, in the late ’70, losing your community – no matter what kind of community – is a difficult thing. My story is very, very different from this (it involves extrication via sting operation and de-programming), but my heart goes out to this man and his family. Andrew, http://www.badmoonie.com.