Gay Mormon Commits Suicide after Excommunication

[dawn9476]

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/ga ... 9/23/27456

:cry:

[Jessica]

This story is so, so sad. :(

Oh, and the wife is a horrible bitch.

[duplessis3]

I don't know what I would do if after many years of marriage, no prior discussion and having several children, my husband came out as gay. I imagine I'd be furious, because so much of my life would be a lie. How much more for a mormon woman? I don't think she is a bitch - I think she saw her marriage was over, she felt betrayed and needed to get away. (What happens to a temple marriage after that? Is it annulled?) I'm fairly sure she didn't expect her husband to kill himself.

[Vex]

You have to remember that this isn't a choice, and that he may not have even KNOWN he was gay until he was already married. When you grow up hearing that gays burn in hell, especially when everyone around you is highly religious, it's a totally normal to not even question your sexuality. Only deviants are gay. You're not a deviant, therefore you're not gay. Those dreams you have about other men are just the devil trying to confuse you. Not only that, but it's totally possible to be gay and fall in love with a person of the opposite gender. Coming out later in life doesn't mean the spouse has been living a lie at all.

No matter how hard it is for the straight spouse, it's normally even harder for the gay one.

[Elle]

How awful for THAT MAN to have felt the need to hide who he was for any length of time!

I have a very beloved friend who is a gay ex-Mormon who was excommunicated, and it hasn't been easy for him, even without every having married. I think religion has it all wrong, and these nuts need to realize that the rules made sense in another time when the human population was low enough that we'd be considered endangered by today's standards, and so all people who could bear children needed to do their part to make sure humans didn't die out. We are now at no risk of dying out. We're at risk of being too many, nearing critical mass. Even in the bible, rules changed.

[Deleted03]

Yeah first he many not have known, second the institution/family may have pushed him in. I'm sure you can feel very bad if after living with someone and having a family he says he's gay (let's face it, my ego would be hurt at some point too).

Anyway, a friend of mine was going through the trial for expressing questions about god to a friend of his, decided to quit before they could finish the process, he got his official letter of being erased from the records not too long ago. Thing is he was attending UU, so he's ok. It's more his family who's shunning him.

[mirele]

Let me make it clear...any suicide is awful. And yes, I have known gay Mormons who committed suicide and mai ghod, I wanted to go around and beat family members and church leaders with a stick. That said, there are some holes in this story and I'm going to consult with someone I know who is tapped into the Mormon gay community (he's called the "gay mayor of Salt Lake City") to see if he has more insight.

I have a hard time commenting on any of this because of my own past history, where I was crazy in love with a guy who came out to me, because I was safe (as opposed to just about everyone else in the ward). I can't say I accepted it well, but almost 30 years later, we are still friends.

What angers me more than anything is that there's still an attitude among a lot of Mormons that being gay is a choice and that you can choose to not be gay. Thus, men and women are pushed into heterosexual marriages and raising families with spouses who generally have no idea. Then, if the one spouse comes out of the closet, the world comes crashing down. When I hear people talking about how allowing gay marriage is unacceptable social engineering, I have to point to this, and think of my own life and ask back, "where's the unacceptable social engineering about encouraging gay and lesbian persons to have heterosexual marriages when we know damned good and well that it's a ticking time bomb?"

I can only imagine what this man's wife felt when he came out to her--and how the church was utterly USELESS in helping her to deal with it and work through all the complex emotions that can arise: "What does this mean for my marriage? my kids? my eternity? Why is he telling me this now? What did I do wrong?" These and so many more questions would be coming up. And again, the church is totally useless in helping to deal with someone coming out.

[ADoyle90815]

Suicides like this are sad, as Mormonism generally teaches that homosexuality is a sinful choice, and that if a person marries someone of the opposite gender, the gayness will go away. I can only imagine what his wife thought when he came out, and I don't think she's a bitch at all, as many Mormon women would feel cheated if their husband came out to them years after they married and had children. After all, they believe that they married a heterosexual, so I can imagine that his wife felt like her eternity is now a lie.

[Katiebug]

It's not uncommon for men to come out of the closet after years or decades of marriage and having children. A high school teacher of ours came out a few years after I graduated. He was a Catholic and married for nearly 30 years with a family, so it was a real surprise. My husband and I attended the same schools but he was 2 classes ahead of me, and was friends with one of this teacher's kids. Anyways, Mr. Bug knew about it for several years before I found out (from my younger brother, attending high school at the time). He knew because his sister's friend had seen the teacher in question becoming a regular in a gay bar years before, when Mr. Bug was still in high school and to everyone's knowledge this teacher was happily married to his wife. Awkward, no?

He's in his mid-60s now and had been raised in a devout Catholic household and social environment and knew he was gay in his teens, but it would not have been acceptable to his family or his church to have come out. It was expected that he would marry and have children. So he married a female friend and did what needed to be done to have children. He felt that they were good friends and co-parents. Apparently his wife was devastated when he came out to her - it was as if her entire adult life had been a lie. To my knowledge he also left the Catholic church at the same time. His kids were adults and while they were not pleased because of the effect on their mother, in time they came to accept it.

I know the LDS church is very anti-homosexual. At least the Catholic church says that gays must live celibate lives; the LDS church actively excommunicates gay members and claims that it's a "lifestyle choice" and not how a person is born.

[Elle]

Anyway, a friend of mine was going through the trial for expressing questions about god to a friend of his, decided to quit before they could finish the process, he got his official letter of being erased from the records not too long ago. Thing is he was attending UU, so he's ok. It's more his family who's shunning him.

Religions that operate like clubs where you have to meet criteria to receive a membership card should lose their tax-exempt status.

[Elle]

It's horrid how anyone should ever feel forced to live a lie so thoroughly that others are dragged into it. We had a family friend who did the same thing, married a woman and stayed in the closet until he met his soul mate and just couldn't do it anymore. His wife and kids were devastated, and she managed to have all visits suspended (basically a legal workaround that effectively cut all his visitation rights, since you have to have major cause to outright cut them, though indefinite suspension works just as well). By the time his kids were old enough to get out of high school, he didn't even know where they were since he had no rights to demand the location of kids he wasn't allowed to see. He was considered to be dangerous for being a "fraud." What the hell did anyone expect of a young man in the 70's in a small town in a low-populated state? You lied, or you risked being killed.

I've got a great-aunt who struck up a deal with a military man. He was afraid of being found out, and she wanted to he a kept woman. He had the family money to give her all she wanted, she had the ability to make sure his sexuality was never questioned so he could go live a military life. He bought the house she lived in (and everything else she wanted until she died), and she bore three children. I'm not sure what about this sickens me the most. There's so much wrong, but this isn't a topic about women looking for sugar daddies and having kids grow up thinking that's normal. The kicker is their first daughter and son both ended up in straight marriages that broke up when they came out of the closet. Their youngest child came our before getting married. Yup, all three kids are gay, and since they were all in a small town, all grew up seeing it as normal to hide their sexuality in loveless marriages because it's what their parents did. My aunt's dead now, and none of them were ever really very happy. Living a lie resulted in loveless, lonely lives. But what choice was there? (I'm so extremely glad DADT is officially over.)

I can only imagine how much worse it would be if there was such pressure from a church. While Smalltown, USA, citizens were at heightened risk of assault or murder, in addition to those risks, even today, there's the trauma of having your entire support network publicly shun you when you need support and safety the most.

[lovefromgirl]

How is it worse to divorce your spouse over orientation than, say, adultery? At least if he's gay, it wasn't you as much as your gender, and you were probably amazing enough that he put it off until he couldn't stay any longer. Me, I'd be flattered. Then again, I have no problem with options other than one man + one woman = married for life with kids.

Adultery, to me, would mean I got tested for everything under the sun. Heartbreak AND poking and prodding. What fun.

[emmiedahl]

I don't blame the wife. She was a victim as well. The whole situation is fucked up.

[JesusFightClub]

How is it worse to divorce your spouse over orientation than, say, adultery? At least if he's gay, it wasn't you as much as your gender, and you were probably amazing enough that he put it off until he couldn't stay any longer. Me, I'd be flattered. Then again, I have no problem with options other than one man + one woman = married for life with kids.

I think for Mormons marriage is considered to affect your eternal status too? So she probably feels really cheated in numerous ways and that would be a really hard one to deal with (please, Mormons here say if I am wrong).

[Katiebug]

I think for Mormons marriage is considered to affect your eternal status too? So she probably feels really cheated in numerous ways and that would be a really hard one to deal with (please, Mormons here say if I am wrong).

Not Mormon, but I believe that in that belief system, a celestial marriage (being sealed in the temple) is required in order to have an eternal family in heaven. Having a "forever family" is huge for the handful of LDS who I know in real life. It must have devastated his wife.

It's sort of a religious double standard. An LDS man be sealed to different wives more than once during his life but an LDS woman can only be sealed to one man during her lifetime. In the case of death of a wife a man can be sealed to his new wife with no issues but a widow who remarries remains sealed to her first husband and can't be sealed to the new husband until both are dead. In the case of divorce a man who wishes to remarry only has to have his sealing "cleared" by the LDS church but a woman wishing to remarry and be sealed to her new husband has to have her first sealing cancelled - and sealing cancellations have to be approved by the President of the church.

So a couple gets divorced and in order for the man to be sealed to his new wife he just needs approval of the LDS church to do so, but the woman has to go through a process (not unlike a Catholic annulment) to have her first sealing cancelled entirely in order to be sealed to the new husband. Who are her kids sealed to, her or their father(s)? I can see how it would be very unsettling for a woman who believes in all of this to give birth to a bunch of kids and then have her husband letting her know that her one sealing was "wasted" and is in essence no longer valid. A sealing is only considered valid as long as both parties are following the rules of the LDS church - so if one spouse takes up drinking alcohol, has an affair, or comes out as being gay then the eternal family is in jeopardy.

Interesting theology, for sure.

[treemom]

I don't know if we can compare the pain in this situation. Even in my house, where sexual orientation is just what it is and not negative or positive it would be really difficult for me if my husband came out as gay. Because at that point I don't think a marriage can survive and be fair to him. If he had an affair and was attracted to women, well their is a possibility that a marriage could continue.

It sucks for both of them and is an example of how homophobia destroys the very families it creates.