Just Gay

The Wicked Witch never died- she just sneaked away with her Fiyero in the end.

I am officially done with BYU and the LDS church. I graduated in April, and I'll be sending in my letter of resignation to Salt Lake very soon. It feels so good to be out and to be resolved. I am lucky to have made it out in one piece, and even luckier to have found the love of my life while I was at school. Then again, I guess marriage is what BYU is all about. Yes, it's a very happy ending to this blog. At the end of the day, I'll tell you that the reason I needed to join the LDS church, alienate my family, leave the country for two years, and suffer through BYU was to meet a boy and fall in love.

For anyone who is reading this blog as a gay BYU student, please understand that if you decide to leave the church, you CAN find happiness and fulfillment. I know that it's really really hard to make the decision, but there are so many people out there who are willing to help you through. Feel free to email me or to reach out to the blogging world to find out more about the moho community.

So I suppose that's it, though you can be sure you'll hear from me again. We already have a joint blog in the works. I'll be in Utah for the rest of the year, but after that you can look for me back east- most likely one of those purple states.

I'll let John Rzeznik have the last word-

"You're the only one I ever believed in
The answer that could never be found
The moment you decided to let love in
Now I'm banging on the door of an angel
The end of fear is where we begin
The moment we decided to let love in"

Hooray for Connecticut!

Three down, forty-seven to go. Hopefully that won't go back up to forty-eight in November. I am so disgusted with the church's reaction to gay marriage in California. I have yet to hear even one nominally cogent argument against gay marriage. Please, if you have one, let me know. I'd like to think that those who will be voting for Proposition 8 are not complete idiots- that there must be some good reasons for their support of what seems to me like a selfish, incompassionate, un-Christian, discriminatory proposition.

Limbo No More

The last few months I have been trying to reassess what spirituality and religion and God all mean to me. When I joined the church it was easy- everything was placed in front of me and I just had to do what everyone else was doing. God was like this, the Holy Ghost felt like this; it was a matter of jumping into the rut and trenching in. Since I’ve climbed out, it has been refreshing to finally breathe new air and see things that I was not seeing before, but I confess I’ve felt a little lost now and then. It can be difficult to embrace a nearly blank slate. But I think in the end it will be so much more spiritually rewarding than anything the rut had to offer. I foresee a much more personal connection with heaven because I will be searching for what is right for me instead of following a brown formula. I do that- I think of things in colors. The church and the rut and the formula are all brown in my mind. And not like a rich library brown or a Hershey brown- more like a decaying grayish brown- think cold oatmeal. Now the world outside the rut- I feel bright green and blue, silver, white, and violet. I guess I have to think of this new world as more of an open horizon and wonderment of colors than a strange wilderness of intimidating hues. It’s time to fill up my new space- I finally have room to run!

My house, my role
My friends, my man
My devotion to God
All amorphous, indefinite

Nothing's been clear
Nothing's been in
Nothing's felt true
And I've never had both feet in
Nothing's belonged
Nothing's been yes
Nowhere's been home
And I'm ready to be limbo no more

My taste, my peers
My identity, my affiliation
All amorphous, indefinite

Nothing's been clear
Nothing's been in
Nothing's felt true
And I've never had both feet in
Nothing's belonged
Nothing's been yes
Nowhere's been home
And I'm ready to be limbo no more

I sit with filled frames
And my books and my dogs at my feet
My friends by my side
My past in a heap
Thrown out most of my things
Only kept what I need to carve
Something consistent and notably me

Tattoo on my skin
My teacher's in heart
My house is a home
Something at last I can feel a part of
Sense of myself
My purpose is clear
My roots in the ground
Something at last I can feel a part of
Something aligned
To finally commit
Somewhere I belong
Cause I'm ready to be limbo no more
My wisdom applied
A firm foundation
A vow to myself
'Cause I'm ready to be limbo no more

Bravery and Cowardice

Who is the coward? I am sure that there are gay Mormons out there who would label those who leave the church to pursue a homosexual lifestyle as cowards; they’re too weak to keep the commandments- too pusillanimous to follow what they know in their hearts to be true. They’re taking the easy way out.

Who is the coward? I am sure that there are gay Mormon renegades out there who would label those who choose to stay in the church as cowards; they’re too craven to leave what is comfortable, acceptable, and safe- too weak to genuinely explore and embrace their identity. They’re taking the easy way out.

Who is the coward? Who is insecure?

So if you care to find me...

Hooray for California! It's about time.

Meet Mr. Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche is perhaps most well known as a philosopher for his quote “God is dead and we have killed him.” He thought Christians were brainwashed slaves- slaves of traditions and morals that favored underachievement (what Christians call humility), and of deception (the fact that we have a biased, self-glorifying concept of “good”). What then is “good” in Nietzsche’s mind? The will to power- that doesn’t necessarily mean power over other people; rather, Nietzsche is referring to having power over oneself. In other words, people should try to overcome the temptation to blindly accept widely held truths or traditions and be brave enough to question, delving into the unknown. In my mind, that is what takes real humility and courage.

Nietzsche also condemns Christianity for parading as a love-filled way of life when so much of it is based in hatred and pity. The Christian doctrine of Final Judgment, he says, was born out of a bitter resentment that the lower class held toward the wealth and power of the noble class. Today it simply serves as a way for any Christian to feel satisfied that their enemies, the people that they envy, and those who belong to any opposing order of society will be punished, securing eternal power and superiority for the Christian.

Of course, I don't agree with everything that Nietzsche teaches (and I still consider myself to be a Christian), but I think his point of view deserves fair consideration. I think that most Christians, whether consciously or subconsciously passing judgments, fit Nietzsche's description- I know I certainly have felt a sense of validation or vindication on several occasions when I have reassured myself that some mean or stuck-up person would get theirs at Judgment Day. And I'm sure that there are plenty of Christians out there who rest easy because the feminists, the intellectuals, and the gays will all get their comeuppance in hell (or in the terrestrial kingdom, if you prefer). Am I wrong to think that this doesn't sound like a very loving way to think about other people? Really, it's not surprising at all that atheism is so popular. I think we all should be a little more Nietzschean.

So This is Gay

The school year is almost over (at least for me :)) and I’ve been thinking about how much life has changed since September. It’s been over six months now since I started coming out again and since I started dating boys. I didn’t really wait very long at all in the beginning to get my feet wet; I think it was less than a week after I started this blog when I got into a relationship, and I haven’t stopped dating since. I don’t want to sound like a floozy- I’ve only dated two boys ;)

I still have a lot of coming out to do- most of which I will probably save for post-Provo life- but I have come out to my immediate family and all of my closest friends. My family has only become more positive about my gayness and with the idea of me dating boys. In fact, I’ll be taking one home with me at the end of the month and my parents are looking forward to meeting him.

From all this dating and coming out I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned what it means to fall in love. I’ve seen both my selfish and selfless extremes. I’ve found out more about just how splendidly joyous and how knifishly (I think I just stole that word from Pan) painful life can be. I’ve also learned some less serious things about me- like how incredibly attractive I find boys with squinty eyes (Josh Hartnett style!), how I love dancing in cages, and how I look really good with eyeliner lol.

I definitely like who I now more than who I was last year. No more dragon-fighting, no more emotional masochism, and no more pretending- just me.