LETTER TO THE EDITOR: To the non-LGBTQ people of USU
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Submitted by Christa Cannell
To the non-LGBTQ people of USU,
I want to lay out an experience I had today, an experience I wish wasn’t common.
At the Center for Women and Gender’s Brown Bag Series, Dr. Renee Galliher presented briefly on a study conducted with John Dehlin in 2015, a study that looked at how queer identity interacted with faith identity (specifically the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). Something like 53% of LGBTQ people were no longer affiliated with the Church (so they left their faith identity for their queer one). Something like 4% integrated those two identities, that’s to say they were “out” about their queer identity and were still active members.
During the Q&A, a member of the Church raised their hand. Two things followed:
1-They corrected Dr. Galliher on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ preference to not be called LDS
2-They went on to invalidate the LGBTQ community’s experiences with the Church
Their response was that it was “nowhere in church doctrine to teach hate towards LGBTQ people.” They continued making their point and defending their faith over the course of a few sentences, meanwhile my queer friends and I gazed over at them, horrified at their naivety. We were angry and frustrated at how little they understood how their church treats us.
Here’s an easy observation based on Dr. Galliher’s presentation… Most queer people left the church (53%) and very little were able to be openly queer at church (4%). Yikes! That shows us that the Church must not be very queer-inclusive. But the Church member’s response? It ignored the numbers, and silenced/corrected/invalidated the voices of my community by claiming that the hate didn’t exist.
The hate exists.
The Church’s holy word may not contain the phrase “Treat LGBTQ people with hate,” but the hate exists. It exists when the Church spends money to fight my right marry. It exists when my friends become ex-friends because of my identity. It exists when Church leaders say “[Satan] seeks to confuse gender…” It exists when queer members are barred from temples and excommunicated. It exists when I receive glares and side-eyes. It exists when queer kids get kicked out for coming out to their church-going folks. The hate exists, deeply entrenched within this organization. The Church is NOT queer-friendly, even if you personally might be.
The hate exists. So please, don’t tell me it doesn’t.
Please take a look at my blog post about this. Universities are not always going to be comfortable places.
In fact, it is almost impossible to learn without being uncomfortable.
I bet it is terrible feeling like you are mistreated a lot, but just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they hate you!
https://www.chooseyourowndiagnosis.com/2018/11/tolerance-does-not-mean-validation.html
If you belong to an organization that you don’t agree with it’s positions why is it the organizations fault or it’s members. If you want to belong to it, then follow its teachings. If you don’t agree don’t be a member of the organization. But then don’t turn around and scream hate when you too are the one hating by trying or wanting the organization to change its ways. Hate normally is a two way street.
Hate, when it comes to marginalized groups, is almost *never* a two way street.
Wanting an organization to exhibit less institutionalized hate is not hate.
Calling out an organization for hateful practices is not hate.
Calling out an organization’s failures is not hate.
But silencing the voices that challenge the hate, that could be hate.
I will never stop fighting and calling out the groups and people that have decided to hate marginalized groups.
Charles, the argument if you don’t like it leave it is so weak…have you ever heard if you don’t like it try to change it? The LDS (I cannot bring myself to call it the Church of Latter Day Saints until they change the title of the book of Mormon.) church seems to be making headway in broadening the influence of women and trying to understand LGBTQ almost certainly as a result of pressure from those excluded groups. How many black individuals did you tell to leave the church because they couldn’t hold the priesthood?