I have followed and enjoyed the writing of Carol Lynn Pearson including her opinion piece in today's Tribune. I have copied and pasted it here.


We can change history for gay LDS
Carol Lynn Pearson
Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:08/16/2008 09:22:18 AM MDT
Reading the various reviews of the new LDS Church-authorized book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, prompts me to stand as witness for another tragic killing of a group of people in our community for which - when we have the benefit of history - we will be deeply ashamed.
The insidious thing about this killing is that we manage - though it would break our hearts to know it - to get the unfortunate ones to pick up the gun and kill themselves. I speak of the suicides of our LDS gay brothers (occasionally sisters) in a number that far exceeds the 120 members of the Fancher party.
Each victim at Mountain Meadows had walking beside him a man poised to raise his gun and shoot. History will show that the gay men of whom I speak had walking beside them a dark shadow impersonating God, a shadow that gave them misinformation about who they were, misinformation that most of us now acknowledge was both dead wrong and deadly: "Homosexuality is often caused by masturbation . . . may lead to bestiality . . . caused by selfishness . . . electric shock will set you right . . . a good woman . . . reparative therapy . . . fasting and prayer . . . you would be better off at the bottom of the Great Salt Lake with a millstone around your neck . . ."
Our current discussion of this issue reflects better science and a more generous spirit, but too many deaths continue. Gay youth attempt suicide three times more often than their straight peers. According to an article in the Deseret Morning News of April 23, 2006, Utah leads the nation in suicides of men age 15-24.
I recently received an e-mail (quoted with permission) from a woman in Utah who said, "I'm in agony over the suicide death two months ago of my youngest son, Marshall, age 25, a gay student who was a senior in chemical engineering at the U. of U. He knew all about spreading love but didn't feel enough in return to keep him going. On my refrigerator I have a package of flower seeds marked, in his writing, '5/1.' That was the day he was going to plant them. He didn't make it that long, so I'll plant them for him - next spring."
The stories keep coming: A woman in my ward just told me of two gay nephews who both took their lives; a woman in the airport recently told me of three LDS gay boys who killed themselves in her neighborhood in Bountiful.
The dozens of stories I personally know are the tip of the awful iceberg. I think of Stuart Matis, an LDS celibate gay man who shot himself on the steps of the stake center in Los Altos, Calif., as a direct result of the intense religious rhetoric around a "protection of marriage" initiative similar to the one proposed in California today.
One of the historians of Mountain Meadows, Ron Walker, says that he's "come to see the massacre as a cautionary tale in making judgments about those who are different" and that the story "is a case study in how not to apply religion and how one should apply true religion in one's own life."
I believe, with these historians, that we LDS people are hungry for the truth and that we want to apply true religion in our lives. I believe with Anne Frank that people are really good at heart and I know that there is no better heart than the Mormon heart, leader and member alike.
I believe that if the rider had reached Salt Lake in time, Brigham Young would have done what he could to avert the massacre in southern Utah. Many messengers today, of which I am one, have ridden in with reports and pleas for help regarding the ongoing self-slaughter of so many of our best and beautiful young men.
For many it is too late. For others - if you and I care enough - we can change history.
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* CAROL LYNN PEARSON is a native Utahn who lives and writes in California. She is the author of the stage play, "Facing East," the story of an LDS couple dealing with the suicide of their gay son. Her most recent book is "No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones."

I wrote a comment to the online discussion: WPLyon: 8/17/2008 9:47:00 AM
+32

As a Mormon bishop I saw first hand the pain of families and young men discovering their sexuality different than the standard. I counseled with several who viewed suicide as an option. I saw the wounds on wrists, the knife cuts. I for a time wrongly embraced Evergreen and faithfully supported their efforts with reparative therapy. It is a failure and destructive to families and individuals.

Thank you Carol for all that you have done for those who carry such burdens and how you represent those of us who care. We must end the phobia, fear of and ostracism in our Mormon culture. It is alive and well as jmm36 illustrates. Pray that you never have a son or daughter that lives with this challenge.

I wholeheartedly agree that when we have the benefit of history we will be deeply ashamed. Consider Elder Harold B. Lee who questioned the American Red Cross to ascertain if the blood bank in Utah had any blood donated by Negroes so the priesthood might remain pure and untouched by the Curse of Cain when they checked in to LDS Hospital for surgery.

Shame on us all for not doing more and doing better with what we have. Jesus was wounded for us. It is not for us to wound and hurt those who are different than the Mormon cultural ideal.

Proposition 8 as viewed by some or most of the Mormons...

"In short, if the arguments used in the war in heaven were persuasive enough to draw billions of God's spirit children away from Him, why should we not expect them to be used on the present battlefield? The same minions cast out from the Father's presence still remember what worked up there.

The stakes are critical. If same-sex marriage advocates can dilute and hollow out the central part of the Creator's plan, the whole structure collapses — the family, the nation, and in time civilization itself. The time has come for those of us who believe that God, not man, created marriage (fortunately still a majority) to take a stand and defend it.

Proposition 8 is a defining moment, a tipping point, a critical battle in our existence, melodramatic as that might sound. This is not a political sideshow. Long after the world only vaguely remembers a President McCain or a President Obama, people will continue to be affected by what happened in the California battle to protect marriage in the fall of 2008."

This came from Meridian Magazine. I have written to the editors objecting to it. The author is a California pollster, BYU graduate and Stanford PhD. His name is Gary Lawrence and the author of a forthcoming book How Americans View Mormonism; Seven Steps to Improve Our Image. He and his wife, Jan, have four children and four grandchildren.

This thinking makes me angry and challenges me as to how I can fit in this culture of fear and homophobia. If my religious faith and experience is defined by people like Brother Lawrence I would drown.

I went to Equality California and made a donation. Their web site is http://www.eqca.org/

My Letter to the Trib

Editors,

I cannot pick up my copy of the Tribune on any morning and not read how our misguided legislature seeks to marginalize, minimalize, and add to the burdens of those who are different but live among us. They may not look exactly like me, though I like salsa better than ketchup and tortillas better than Wonder Bread. They may not share my gender orientation, but their agenda, if there is one, does not threaten my marriage, my family or my values. I am an old Mormon bishop and I cannot sit still any longer and listen to the garbage coming from the hill from our ethnically challenged and homophobic legislators. They are a threat to me and the tranquility of my life.

I ask these erstwhile champions, protectors of our freedom, our race, our morality, wouldn't the world be a better place if you just enjoyed your lobbyist paid for Jazz games and junkets to the Caribbean, and left the rest of us alone? In spite of these legislators of morality as people of Utah, who are kind, compassionate, and caring, can we not find and share the things we have in common, celebrate our differentness, enjoy that which is unique about us all as children of a loving Heavenly Father rather than marginalizing and criminalizing so many among us?