Blind Prophecy

With less than a week until the election, today is Write To Marry Day, a nationwide effort to get bloggers blogging about all the reasons to oppose California’s proposition 8 (as well as Florida’s prop 2 and Arizona’s prop 102).

So I’m writing today to encourage you to vote no on these ballot measures if you are registered to vote in those states.

Look, I’ve been working on marriage equality since before I joined the staff of Nevada’s “No on 2″ campaign in 2000. Even when I’ve questioned whether or not marriage equality is the right fight for the queer community, even when I’ve wrestled with my personal feelings about heteronormative and assimilationist priorities, even when I’ve argued with others about the inherent classism in the marriage equality movers and shakers, I’ve always stood by the fact that so long as marriage is recognized by the government as a legal institution, barring any group of people from the full and honest enrollment in that institution is wrong.

Banning same-sex couples is nothing more than discrimination. In the end, after all the arguments and red herrings about children in school or lies about churches being forced to perform ceremonies that are in violation of their beliefs, it all boils down to this… a vote “yes” on prop 8 is a vote that says “I don’t like homosexuals and I think I am inherently better than them.” Which is another way of saying, “I am choosing to discriminate against an entire group of people.”

Banning marriage equality won’t stop children from learning about gay people. Banning marriage equality won’t improve or protect anyone’s marriage. Banning marriage equality won’t make lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people shut up and stop fighting for equal treatment under the law.

Vote No on Prop 8 in California.
Vote No on Prop 2 in Florida.
Vote No on Prop 102 in Arizona.
Vote No on Discrimination.

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And now, on a related note, this year’s election cycle has put a great deal of strain on me personally. I find the actions and the extreme politicization of the Mormon church to among the most offensive displays of my life. As someone raised in an LDS family and as someone who still tries to remain kind-hearted and forgiving about the Mormon faith, I’m having a hard time reconciling my fantastic relationship with my family with the putrid hate coming from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

To be a faithful Mormon, to be deemed worthy of the “Temple Recommend” (which grants access to the LDS Temples and the important rituals of life and afterlife performed within), one must affirm their belief that Thomas S. Monson (the current President of the church) is a living prophet and that his leadership is directly guided by God. This is a belief on which all other faith in the church relies. To believe or to know that the prophet is morally wrong is to deny the fundamental doctrine on which the church is built. I hope and believe that those who are close to me, my Mormon family and friends, do not wish to see discriminated against. I know that they do not believe me to be evil and inherently “less” than themselves.

A day of reckoning is coming for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If the Mormon church continues to pursue this agenda of close-minded hate, denying science and the evidence of millions of families, they will tear their very membership apart. It would break my heart to see my mother, my father, or my siblings forced to choose between their love of me and their lifelong faith in the church. Yet I believe that day is coming unless the Mormon faith can shake loose the chains of hypocrisy and institutionalized discrimination.

I’m trying hard not to paint an entire population with the same brush, and I recognize that there are many, many Mormons who are conflicted and torn about this issue. The news has been filled in the last few weeks with public declarations of LDS members who are wrestling with their faith and unable to grasp how a church that once brought them such peace has now become a place of pain and heartache. So my anger is directed at the small patriarchal enclave of church leadership who are steering this ship and those marching troops who never allow themselves to question a single directive or pronouncement from these out-of-touch and bigoted old men.

To the rest of the Mormons, I can offer only this small piece of advice: be okay with skepticism. Approaching life with a skeptical eye to all decrees of “God’s will” can be difficult, it can be painful, it can be soul-sickening work at times… but when you pass through those times and find the answers that come not from some old man you’ve never met, but from your own intelligent and honest mind, the peace is a thousand times greater than anything I ever knew praying in public or private. You have minds, and voices, and votes… do not give away your power.

Filed under: atheism, politics by Jere Keys