Naturally Curly Red Hair

Summer of 2013

Some time toward the end of 2013, I was trying to figure out what I felt about so-called same-sex attraction.  I had blogged a bit about it, decrying hypocrisy that I saw within society generally, and my Church, and deploring the suicides among LGBT LDS youth.  I had begun to admire Mitch Mayne, an openly gay member of the Church in a ward leadership calling. But I was entirely passive about it and decided that it wasn’t good for me to just emotionally stance myself.

I had done psychotherapy with a transgender man, and had been professionally seeing a gay client who is HIV positive (I have blogged about him).  I had also begun having telephone therapy sessions with the son of a dear friend in Utah, and that son is gay.  

It was as if God was bringing these people into my professional life to enable me to see how wonderful and real they were, and to realize that in spite of their sexual orientation, I cared deeply for them.  It was as if God wanted me to experience a change in attitude and in my behavior.

Bishop Robert E. Davis - 2006 to 2009

In spite of these people coming into my life, I had believed the Church’s indoctrination and policies.  I had participated from a managerial level in the Prop 8 “get out the vote” campaign as a bishop assigned to get my congregants to participate.  I had adopted an attitude that it was fine if gays and lesbians had same-sex attraction; they just couldn’t act upon them as any other unmarried person.  It seemed perfectly logical and in keeping with my beliefs about accepting everything that Church leadership (i.e., apostles and prophets) said.

But there was cognitive dissonance in my heart and I felt I needed to explore it and make a decision as to what I really believed, and would embrace going forward.  It was due to that desire that I decided to watch three one-hour-an-a-half interviews by a fellow Mormon named John Dehlin.  He had done hundreds of interviews of various LDS people who had felt challenged by LDS beliefs.  John had posted them at a website called “Mormon Stories Podcast.” (mormonstories.org)

My wife and I have watched a number of seasons of a TV reality show called “So You Think You Can Dance.”  One of the podcasts was an interview with Benji Schwimmer, who had won the competition in the Show’s second season.  We knew that he had reported being gay, and my wife and I were very drawn in to his story because of the Show and because he was LDS.  We were spellbound by it.

He was a returned missionary and had emotionally battled his same-sex attraction for most of his life, even during his mission, and especially during the Show.  He related over and over again that constant conflict that raged within him, between his desires that he couldn’t pray or fast away and the teachings of the Church that forbade acting on homosexual desires.  He discussed the constant shame and guilt he felt, and how it affected his work, his relationships, his life.  He talked about getting into an opposite gender relationship, hoping that it would take his homosexual feelings away, but it didn’t.

Benji Schwimmer

At length, he related how he was participating in a general Sunday worship service (Sacrament Meeting) some time after he had won the competition, when he had a profoundly spiritual experience in which he felt that God truly loved him and accepted him as he was.  He knew in that moment that he could no longer stay a member of the Church—for the turmoil and dissonance that it caused within him—and he testified that as he experienced that thought, he felt a deep, sweeping peace come over him, the most profound spiritual moment of his life.  As he talked about it, I too felt at peace with his decision; that it was fine with God that his path was not in the LDS path, at least for now.  I could accept his decision.

I think something occurred deep within me as I experienced this profoundly moving story of Benji’s.  It was as if it allowed me to question what I had held as spiritually unquestionable my whole life.  It was as if I was not bound anymore by religious ritual or custom or practice.  For Benji, and now for me, what was paramount was not what the Church taught, but what my relationship was/is with Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.  To the degree that the Church facilitated my relationship with these Heavenly Beings, I could/would follow its teachings.  But to the degree that Church practice was at variance with what my heart and mind were being told by the Holy Spirit, I would question such practice and do what I felt the Spirit was directing me to do.

It was near the end of the year that I watched John Dehlin give a TED Talk at Utah State University about why he as a straight man is an LGBT Ally; in other words, why he actively supported the LGBT cause.  As I listened to him, I realized that I shared his thoughts and feelings and that I too must become an LGBT Ally.  

I heard this Talk after having read and then posted on this Blog the three articles dealing with varying aspects and challenges of the LGBT community.  Again, it seemed that God was taking me down this unknown path that was important for me to walk.

Near the end of 2013, with my beard 

Once I made that decision, my feelings about the Church seemed to moderate.  I was not automatically accepting what I had heard over Church pulpits.  I was not accepting the Church’s practices and current doctrine concerning homosexuality.  I was seeing how Church policies and procedures had moderated and evolved over time, such as with polygamy, Blacks and the Priesthood, and even masturbation, and I became hopeful that its policies and procedures concerning homosexuality will likewise moderate over time.

On one level, I suppose that I have become more critical of Church leadership, at least on a Stake and General level.  I do not automatically accept what I hear but think about it, and occasionally pray about it, and if it feels right, then I make it mine.  If not, if it feels like opinion and the Spirit does not confirm it to my heart, then I dismiss it.   At times I am disappointed at the institutional Church and the decisions it makes.  Maybe I have become more cynical.

But I still have a strong testimony that the Church, led by fallible men and women, is the Church that God wants me to belong to. I yet have a strong testimony of Joseph Smith, of the Book of Mormon, of the organization of the Church, of power in the priesthood and the importance of temples, of many doctrines of the Church like tithing.  I still believe in the Plan of Salvation.  I am appreciative of all of the service that is done by members around me and around the world, and the good that the instirutional Church does all over the world.

But I feel that I am a different man than I was just six months ago.  Besides being an LGBT Ally, I am not the same member of the Church that I have been all my life.  I’m more open to other people, other ways of thinking, other ideas, other ways to live life, other ways to find happiness. I feel more grace. I feel more contentment than I have ever felt.  I feel more in love with my wife and feel more love for my children and loved ones.  I feel more capable of loving than I have ever felt. 

Which leads me to what I ultimately wanted to say in this blog posting.  For the first 59½ years of my life, I have parted my red hair on the side, and for many years used a comb and then a brush (for the last 25 years, my father’s Fuller Brush) to straighten out my curly hair.  To me, my parted red hair has represented who I have been for most of my life: conservative, predictable, common, conforming.  

In the beginning of 2014, as a manifestation of my newly found life and beliefs, I decided to see what my hair looked like without brushing it. I liked it! I decided to let it be what it is—naturally curly.  It was my way of "coming out." All that I do now is wash it, towel dry it, run my fingers through it, and leave the bathroom to live my life.  Does my red hair always look neat?  No, because I am no longer neat.  To quote Popeye, I am what I am, and now my red hair is what it is: natural and curly!  Kind of like me now!  Truly, RED IN TRANSITION!