LETTER: ‘Choosing’ not part of being gay

Editor,

This letter is in part an answer to Jon Cox’s column on March 30. Frankly, I am sick and tired of these “opinions” of so-called “followers” of the LDS faith. I have been raised in a very strong LDS family my whole life. I have a very deep love and belief in the LDS faith, and I am gay.

Coming to terms with this has been made extremely difficult for me, due to the fact that there are those members who defy the teachings of Christ and repeatedly try to attack who and what I am.

Honestly, do you really think that I would “choose” to live my life as a gay person? Do you believe I would “choose” to break my mother’s heart and destroy her dreams of my future? No, I did not choose to be gay and thanks to so much hateful and hurtful retaliation to my sexual orientation, I have been battling on-going depression for years. I know from the depth of my soul I am gay, it is not a questioning mannerism in any fact. Yet, that does not make it any easier when the people and community I grew up with and loved my whole life so casually label it as a perverted lifestyle and title me as a dysfunctional member of society. It hurts on a daily basis to watch and hear my very rights as a citizen of this great country get stripped away and to see discrimination added into state and federal laws. This is wrong, not what the church teaches and not Christ-like behavior.

Just because a person is gay doesn’t meant they are without heart and feelings. We hurt just like everyone else does. I have been taught my whole life to love one another, judge not that ye shall not be judged and to let he who is without sin cast the first stone. These are principles that I live my life by. My life is not void of sin, but being gay is not one of them. I am a child of God and his light radiates within me.

To hate is a personal choice and we all possess free agency so you can accept me, rob me of my rights, even burn me at the stake, but I am gay and I am here to stay.

Tiffany Larsen