No More Dodging the Bullet

When I first heard of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to rescind the legality of same-sex marriage in the state of California, I felt fortunate that I don't live there. I thought I wouldn't have to face, in any kind of personal way, the Church's reaction and involvement. When I heard of people in LDS wards in Washington and Oregon asked to volunteer time and donate money to the cause, I began to worry.

Last week we got the call in our ward in the Mormon heartland, Utah County. By now I'm not surprised. Instead I'm sad and sick about it. I passed on the sign-up sheet to make phone calls to California (along with information for where to get the talking points and answers to questions and objections people might have). Some of my friends and neighbors talked excitedly about the last days, sifting the chaff from the wheat, and fighting the battles of righteousness. I was heartened, however, to sense a bit of unease, even embarrassment, in others.

My sweet neighbor from across the street--at the time my visiting teacher--said not long ago, "it doesn't seem fair, and it seems like prejudice and discrimination, but the Prophet says it, so it must be right."

Ultimately, that's what it comes down to, for most of my Church brothers and sisters. I could talk about the benefits of chastity, marriage, and monogamy (which I believe in) for gay people as well as straight; I could talk about tolerance and charity and Christ-like love; I could even tell of the phone calls at two a.m., the midnight rush to my office or the homes of my patients, holding the hand of a sobbing young man or young woman, or worse, the hand of a white-faced mother or father in the emergency room while their child is behind the curtain gagging down the charcoal after an overdose.

But what it comes down to is "the Prophet says."

Many years ago during the ERA controversy, I realized that the leaders of the Church were willing to sacrifice individuals for what they perceive as the good of the whole. At that time I also realized there was nothing about me that Church leaders would find particularly valuable--if push came to shove, I could be sacrificed too. And I backed down. It was a womens' issue, I was a woman, if I had to I could live with it. Inequity based on sex had been around for a long time, maybe it would all take longer than I thought, but surely, the changes would come in my lifetime--

It was probably my first suicidal young gay Mormon patient who pushed me past this position of cowardice and accommodation. He said, "Why shouldn't I die? Why, really? I can live closeted and dying inside, or come out and lose everything and everyone I love. I might as well be dead. I have no hope of love and no hope of heaven."

At that moment I realized whose side I was on. Suicide makes me frantic, desperate. Maybe it's a weakness in a therapist. I scan the obituaries daily, morbidly, for faces of former patients, just as I scan the photos accompaning police reports. I look for a long time at the faces of young men and women for whom no cause of death is given, the ones described as "exhausted by the struggle here" or "gone to a better life." Early in my graduate training, two of my former patients killed themselves after their release from the State Hospital. I dream about it sometimes. I keep my cell phone charged and next to me day and night.

The Prophet says. But the call to obedience works only up to a point, and for me the point has been reached. I will not participate in a project that even indirectly, kills my patients. This is a life-and-death matter. I haven't yet decided what I must do, as well as not do, but I have a feeling that my low-profile, camouflage days are over. I feel scared and angry that it has come to this. What was merely irritating and exasperating about the Church's stance on women now violates my conscience and goes against my faith as a follower of Jesus as it applies to my gay and lesbian clients. I don't know what will happen when I go to Church day after tomorrow, or when I teach my Relief Society lesson in a couple of weeks. Silent acquiescence is no longer acceptable.