Why are people so blinded by things that don't concern them?

For the last few months and I suppose for me the last three to four years, I have been reading as much as I can about the the issue of homosexuality in our various communities.

Much of the noise and hatred seems to come from the loud minorities within the far right wing Christian community. The US seems to lead that charge, but here in Australia we also have a loud minority.

As I move on this journey of my own and slowly reveal my true self to more and more of my friends, it's almost a non event. All of the fear I had about the coming out journey, family, friends, work colleagues etc seems to have been for nought.

I recently travelled interstate for my brother-in-law's 50th birthday bash. Over the years I've met many of my sister's friends and we often catch up when ever I visit. At least four of my sister's girlfriends came up to me during the party and said how proud they were of me. I was taken aback by their openness, generosity and kindness.

Don't get me wrong, there are friends I've not "come out" to yet, but I'm confident they may have found out from someone else. That's not he ideal scenario, but it's very difficult to announce to everyone at the same time you've decided to come out. Ok, facebook may be an option, but not for me. I blog instead :-)

My point is that I see a disconnect between the loud rhetoric form the Christian right and the people I know. Coming from an LDS (Mormon) Church background I have enough friends I may have assumed where right wing. I'm discovering that people are not perhaps as far right wing as I had assumed.

There are a number of organisations in the US, one of the most vocal is NOM (The National Organization for Marriage). They very vocally appose any effort to provide equal rights to all members of the community. With the support of various groups, they focus their attention of the gay community. However, these same conservative groups don't seem to attack with the same degree of rigor or financial backing, the issue of straight men & women cheating on each other, or straight men and women who engage in sexual relations out of wedlock.

Each of these apparent "sins" carry very weighty consequences according to the Christian view of the Old and New Testaments. Perhaps over time, their distorted and bigoted behaviour will become clear to more and more people.

I decided to write this post today because I just don't see where this will end. However, the battle must go on. As long as citizens in a free society can't chose to love who they want to and to marry who they want to, justice is absent on this issue.

If you want to learn more about what some in the gay community are doing in the US, visit the Human Rights Campaign, they do tremendous work. In Australia you can visit Australian Marriage Equality and see what they're doing to bring some sanity to the marriage act.

I've said in previous blogs that my personal opinion is that Governments should get out of the marriage business and leave it to religious and secular institutions to perform as they see appropriate.

Talk to your to your friends, listen to their point of view and share your own. If you don't have one, that's also ok, but I'd encourage you to read to better understand how this issues is creating a second class of citizens who have limited rights compared to the rest

What About Talking To A Shrink?

Is Professional Help An Option?

My initial reaction was that only sick people go to see a ‘shrink’, why did I need to see a psychologist? My friend explained that if you need to build muscles, don’t we all, you go to the gym. If you have something physically wrong with you, you go to the doctor. If you feel you have something emotionally wrong with you, a psychologist is a great place to start. I thought about his analogy and I suppose it made sense. I did’t feel as though I had something “emotionally wrong” with me, I was just unable to reconcile certain feelings and emotions I had. So, I decided to make my first ever appointment with a psychologist.

I arrived at my first appointment with no idea what was going to happen except for impressions collected from Hollywood movies and many sitcoms. I went into his office and after some initial greetings, I sat in a big wing back chair and the psychologist sat directly in front of me in another wing back chair. I thought I was supposed to be laying on a couch! It was literally silent for a few minutes and I asked “How do we do this?” and he responded “Start at the beginning…”. The hour was over before I knew it, I think I spoke for about 90% of the time. I discovered that psychologists are good listeners. I went once a month for about 12 months and found the whole process really rewarding and helpful.

I shared with my mum and a close friend of mum’s that I was seeing the psychologist. I didn’t tell mum why, she didn’t need to know and at that point I didn’t want her to know. She went through all the points where she thought she had failed as a mum and raised issues she felt would certainly be discussed in my sessions. Little did she know most of the time was spent on issues that really didn’t even relate to her, mostly about my interaction with men, the absence of my father and an over inflated reverence I have for authority. I won’t expand on that last one in this book, it’s very strange.

After finally coming out, I learnt that my non-member mother had thought that I may have been gay for a number of years, but she hadn’t raised this issue because she thought my faith may have been a hurdle. She was right and my membership in the LDS Church was a key reason why I hadn’t wanted to come out. There was the embarrassment and maybe shame that I had lead one lifestyle for almost 20 years and was now choosing a very different one. I didn’t want people to think ill of the Church, I took my covenants seriously, although I appreciate my private behaviour would suggest otherwise.

Making the decision to come out is a very personal one. For me, the journey from being in the closet to stepping out and then sharing more of myself, was rewarding and invigorating. It was also scary and a little nerve racking at times, but worth the journey nonetheless. For me, it started with a friend, it then my Bishop and then eventually more friends. Today, a small network of 10 or so friends have heard from me that I’m gay and I’m sure others have heard through the grapevine. That’s ok, it’s who I am and I’m cool with that. It took me time to get the point where it was cool though, that took me a couple of years. Today there are still people that I believe don’t know and I want to tell them, but the tyranny of distance makes it difficult. Friends who live interstate and overseas.

I’ve thought about writing a letter and sharing my news with them like that, I really don’t want them to  find out from someone else. Perhaps writing this book will help me get those words down on paper and in the mail. 

Tyler Clementi

The news covers again the tragic loss of life of another gay teenager who chose to take his own life. At 18, he was a promising music student, his friends spoke highly of him, a great person. But where are we as a society that a young man chooses to take his life because people have found out that he's gay?

Then there's the kids that we never hear about, who quietly take their lives without the fanfare of global news coverage. How many gay teenagers have watched the news this week and seen Tyler's plight and the choice he made? I imagine there are many thousands. I worry that they see this as perhaps their only way out of the humiliation they feel, the bullying they suffer at school and the fear they have about sharing with their family and loved ones that they're gay.

One of my favourite online gay columnists, Dan Savage was horrified at this story as with any story of a gay person taking their life. So, he and his husband put together a YouTube Channel called It Gets Better. He's invited others to contribute and share their stories about high school, the bullying and coming out to parents. The general consensus being that life really does get better when you leave high school.

Of the news coverage I read, from the US, Australia and Canada some of the most enlightened comments from readers came from Salt Lake City, Utah. Comments like:


"tribtalksense says: One of the people in my office has a great saying posted it states, "Never take a person's dignity. It means everything to them and has no worth to you." - Frank Barrow.  This despicable act, (by those taping it), demonstrates this."

"nungwa says: Self-loathing is a bitter and cruel thing. The shame and embarrassment Tyler must have felt had to be excruciating."

If you know any young people who are struggling with their sexuality, take a moment to send them an email with a link to It Gets Better and maybe share you're own story with them.


Click here for Australia News Coverage

Click here for Canadian News Coverage

A Little Further Out

When I joined in the Church as a teenager in 1988, there were a couple of families who kind of adopted me. I will forever to grateful to them for their love and guidance. It's now about three years since I started my coming out journey, but I've not come out to them, although I think they know anyway.

It's been almost twelve months since I stopped going to Church. One of the families lives here in Sydney and the other in Melbourne. The mother of one of these families managed to extract my news from a close mutual friend. I told my friend I didn't want her to lie for me at any time.

I got an email today from the eldest son of one of these families, he said "I hear you're not attending Church, what's going on?" I was kind of glad that he asked. So I explained how I got to where I am today, how I've felt about that journey and how I've felt about that in the context of Church.

I'm curious to hear back from him, I'll keep you posted.

Will you share your experience?

As part of a book I'm writing, I'm collecting feedback from gay LDS men and women. The survey is anonymous, you can identify yourself if you'd like to.

Please click on the link below, the survey will take no more than 10-15minutes to complete.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GQLRFW9

Please feel free to send this link to any gay LDS men/women you may know.

Many thanks for your participation.

Results will be posted here, probably around July 2011.

Coming Out to Family & Friends cont...

Making the choice to come out is your own and I hope you get to do it on your own terms. Just make sure you take the time to think about the steps you want to take and the manner in which you want to do it. Just keep in mind you can’t control how people will respond, some with love you more than ever and some will have a difficult time understanding. Let those people go, let them take the time they need to figure things out in their own mind. If they really love you, they will come back. As for those who reject you, you can’t change them. Just love them and accept them for who they are.

I had come out to someone in the late 1990’s. I was living in Melbourne and had met a guy through Church, he was a lovely guy and engaged. He wasn’t your average LDS member, he had dreadlocks and had his own take on how to live the gospel. The thing I liked about him the most, was that he was very open minded about things. I was attracted to this guy, primarily because I knew if I came out to him he would be cool and non judgmental.

I finally summed up the courage to come out to him, although it was in a very convoluted way. I had sent him a email with a report on a subject we’d discussed, I edited the article and inserted comments about how I felt about guys and that I was gay and wanted to come out. At first glance, the article looked like the original, he would only see my edits if he read the complete article. Well, he did read the article and called me soon after. We met, spoke and I found his warmth and friendship encouraging. 

He was the first person I had ever told that I was gay and that experience could not have been better. Over the coming weeks and months we spoke more about my situation and again I found his thoughts and views very helpful. However, I managed to smother this guy and he eventually asked for some space. It really hurt, but I knew I had put too much on him and was asking too much. We met a few weeks later and he gave me the name of a psychologist. He worked in the medical field and was able to refer me to a psychologist he had also seen in the course of his work.

The decision to tell friends is either terrifying or a relief. For me I found it a mixture of those feelings. I had been dating my partner for about seven months and I was finding it really difficult to juggle between the time I wanted to spend with him and the time my friends were used to me giving to them. As a single guy, your time is your own and my LDS friends began to see that my time was becoming less and less available. 

Looking back and having had discussions with them, they wondered what was up. They had sensed I was having issues with the Church and when I moved from my Ward to the inner west of Sydney, they started to ‘join the dots’ so to speak. Sydney’s inner west has a bohemian feel to it, it’s more open than where I was living relative to the gay community. I hadn’t consciously thought about it, but perhaps that’s why I chose to move there.

While trying to perform this juggling act I knew I had to come out to these people, two couples and a single girlfriend all around my age. I approached them individually and shared my news, for each of them this wasn’t a shock. Let me share some of the steps I went through to share my news in the hope it may give you some ideas.

Australian Federal Election

And so the day begins with millions of Australians heading to the polls to vote. The media suggest that only 20% of voters know who they're going to vote for. I was amongst the 80% who for the first time in my life made the choice literally standing in the booth.


What has caused this confusion in my mind? I think there are a number of things. For the first time I'm voting as an openly gay man - does this really factor into who I vote for? Well, it seems to be largely irrelevant. Both of the major parties won't allow gay "marriage", so there's no benefit there for me on that issue regardless which party I vote for.


Should I vote on a single issue? I don't think so. Our election process has become very American in the way people think and the way the media present it. Australian's don't vote for the PM, the PM is appointed by the party who win with the majority of seats in the House of Representatives. 


With the ousting of Kevin Rudd, this should be very clear to people, the PM is a party decision not a decision for the people. However, people still say "I voted for Julia" or "I voted for Tony". Well, actually no, you didn't. You vote for your local member who belongs to a party and the party appoints the PM.


My own mother having voted Liberal her entire life, voted for "Julia" this time round because she can't stand "Tony". Voting is a personal thing and I applaud her for participating in the process and I'm in not place to appose her motivations, but I do disagree with that thought process.


Regardless of the outcome, same-sex couples will still be second class citizens as their relationships are seen as offering no value to the community. Until our relationships are on an equal footing with all Australians, there is work to do.


Is "Marriage" necessarily the right act or word to create such equality - I'm not sure. Does changing 80 Australian federal laws that almost bring equality for same-sex couples? I don't think so, it's a mockery, "almost equality" is not equality.