3:30 am
I had walked out to my grandparents-in-law's house to simultaneously clear my head and achieve a step goal. Laying on the front steps in the peace of a rural Idaho night, I gave in to my Twitter habit and came across a TikTok share of video from a BYU address by Vaughn J. Featherstone. He was railing against the "homosexuals" who were pleading with the brethren to be seen and heard and loved. He said perversion will always be perversion, even though these men really wanted to have families and remain faithful. He brought up a point of doctrine that's been especially thorny for me: eternal progression.
Eternal progression isn't a common doctrine in the Christian world. The LDS variety basically teaches that perfect beings still progress but, being perfect, their progression is accomplished through production of offspring, spiritual and physical. To be like God, a perfect being, it's imperative to procreate. You can't procreate and thus progress in the eternities if you don't do it here. (There are exceptions made, but acting gay isn't one of them.) That's why the LDS are so big on family, the bigger the better. I was actively taught this doctrine and it marked me to my core.
To rebuff the pleas to the brethren for acceptance, Featherstone invoked eternal progression, inferring since "homosexuals" can't have children, their attempts to create families with a same-gender partner were in vain and not to be taken seriously. I listened to this speech, given when I was still a child, and heard all the voices accumulated through the years telling me I was deficient, unacceptable, that I was unwanted and unlovable.
I quoted the tweet to my own account, pointing at it as an example of why I struggle to value myself. An inspiration regarding Abraham struck while I composed it and I included the words that came without registering their significance to me. I was still immersed in emotional pain. For what seemed the millionth time, I wanted to die.
I sat up on the steps. The porch light was triggered and I waited for it to switch back off. I was hoping the deer I'd scared away would come back. The moon shone down and the cool night air carried the sounds of crickets and distant traffic. The peace of night was a balm. Something in me shifted. I bowed my head, drew myself in, and out came a prayer unlike any I'd offered before. I asked for help to live. I asked it twice. Hot tears fell on my hands and the grief ebbed away.
I stood and began the walk back. As I walked, the images of Featherstone and numerous other brethren coalesced and I spoke out loud to them. My pain had given birth to anger. In that moment, the thought about Abraham returned and it solved the problem that's tortured me for decades.
Most members of the LDS church take the doctrine of adoption into the lineage of Abraham very seriously. We former Gentile children become part of the fulfillment of God's promise to the ancient patriarch that ensures his eternal progression. If that can be the case for Abraham, can't adoption of children by queer couples do the same? Of course it can! We are just as capable of eternal progression as any cisgender, hetero human. The children we adopt become as our own flesh and blood!
I rejoiced. I can live! I can live eternally! I'm not going to live out my post-mortal life as some neutered house elf to the exalted beautiful people! (Yes, that's how one teacher at Ricks College described those in the Celestial Kingdom.) The tears falling now were tears of relief and hope, mingled with the release of grief. They were also tears of gratitude, an expression of the awareness my prayer had just been answered.
There were other words and thoughts as I continued my way home, some to do with the necessary role of gay folk in humanity, but they are for another time. I wanted to record this answer so I wouldn't forget.
I stand all amazed.
