Learning to Bite My Tongue

I have previously written about my mixed feelings regarding the LDS church.  On the one hand, I love my Mormon heritage, my connection to family and friends and the many positive experiences I had as a youth, all taught, fostered and encouraged by the Church.  On the other hand, having rejected the divinity of the religion, and become agnostic, I resent the fact that I never had a real chance to explore my sexuality and feel many of the poor choices I have made and bad experiences I had, while all of my own doing, were direct results of this same environment.  And my resentment has only become stronger  as I have observed the hypocrisy of many members and the Church’s approach towards homosexuals.

Further, I have always had crocodile tears for member complaints about “unfair” media portrayals and investigations into individual and organizational scandals.  I have long maintained, even as an active member, that when one portrays oneself as a “peculiar people” with “higher” standards, one should be prepared for the recriminations that follow the discovery of inevitable failures in meeting such an elevated sense of place in the world.  You can’t have it both ways – can’t say on the one hand “look at us and see our higher, more celestial standards and the many examples of noteworthy saints living them” and then claim bias an persecution when publication of the the less savory examples occurs.

However, most of my friends and family are good, active members of the Church.  Far from perfect, but prime examples of the good that can flow from the culture.  Honest, less-than-perfect people who, on the whole, try to live good, decent lives and find comfort and guidance from the Church in their strivings.  I have told myself time and again that I need to respect their beliefs, even encourage them in the many areas I find those beliefs are consistent with my philosophy of life. 

Unfortunately, I’m just not very good and keeping my mouth shut.  Hazards of my former career as a lawyer, or just my basic “always have to have an opinion” me.  Whatever it is, I sometimes go overboard.  And I need to stop.  Not because my opinion isn’t worthy or wrong, but because I need to have enough confidence in it not to offer it to people who I know it will make uncomfortable.  Contention over an opinion, to me, only suggests that the opinion isn’t as secure as the individual holding it would like everyone, including himself, think. 

Case in point:  I’m on a road trip yesterday with some LDS friends.  One of them comments how, when they went to another building to play basketball because theirs was locked, they got yelled at by the members who attended the chapel in question.  I was taken a bit by surprise because one of the yellers was an acquaintance and yelling was totally inconsistent with what I knew of his personality.  So, I offered that this was typical of “Mormons and basketball.”  I base that opinion on long, sad experience watching the transformation which often occurs when an individual moves from the chapel to basketball in the gym.  Jekyll and Hyde and one of the most common and worst examples of Mormon hypocrisy.

My friend was exasperated and said “it’s not just Mormon it’s everyone” and told me how he had played street ball for years and everyone acted like that.  My reply was that it is in fact uniquely Mormon since Mormons claim a special righteousness and then a bishop will walk on a basketball court and get out of control angry.  (See my above position on being held to the standard you set).  Conversation ends.  A few minutes of previously absent tension.  Then, men being men, discussion moved on to something new and equally meaningless.

So what did I gain by my comment?  Nada.  Don’t get me wrong, I am right on this issue.  But my zeal in making my point didn’t make me more right, nor did it convince him.  And the subject was of no great consequence to any of us.  All I did accomplish was making him defensive and taking the fun out of the road trip for at least a few minutes.  I ended up unsatisfied.  He ended up unsatisfied.  No one’s opinion was changed.

And I don’t want that.  The people present are my best friends.  They are very LDS (one is my former bishop), and yet have not been critical of my leaving the church, becoming agnostic and revealing that I am gay.  They are sensitive to my feelings on Proposition 8 and the Church’s stance towards homosexuality in general.  I’ve never been made to feel uncomfortable.  I get invited to many functions, and very much enjoy going.

So, I need to return the favor.  My little comments about the Church need to end when I am around them.  Not because I am wrong.  Far from it.  But because I know I am right.  And I should be comfortable in that knowledge without needing to expound on my positions to an audience I know they will at best make uncomfortable and at worst offend.  I love and care about these people and need to be considerate.  I have other family and friends, and of course my blog, where I can express myself.