The Myth of the Double Standard

I've just read a fascinating post on normorestrangers.org that has prompted me to want to write about something that has been on my mind since reading something similar on another blog last week. The original post (found here) is called "The Gay Law of Chastity" and it is written by Hermia Lyly. In summary, although you really should read the entire essay yourself, what Ms. Lyly puts forth is that the LDS church has a double standard, one for straight people that is clearly delineated and taught, and a different one for gay people that is nebulous at best and interpreted and enforced differently in different wards and stakes across the country, apparently at the whim of each bishop or stake president. It is suggested by Ms. Lyly that the Church should make both equal or at least more clearly define the gay law of chastity. She makes a beautiful and logical case. But her argument still left me shaking my head because I was envisioning how devout, orthodox Mormons would interpret her words (and this is what has been on my mind since last week): "There exists no double standard because a gay lifestyle is not a valid way to live one's life; thus it is not worthy of having a standard. It is not a standard of God's." And this will always be the Church's stance as long as it sees LGBT people as "the other," as something deviant from and less than its divine heterosexual norm.

To frame my thoughts, I first need to take a step back and provide a couple other historical examples. Several come to mind.

In the 19th century several scientists published findings that proved that the skulls of Negroes (all outdated terminology is theirs, not mine) are fundamentally different than those of whites, through a process known as craniometry. Dr. Samuel Morton (whose findings were later found to be "padded" to say the least) claimed that through craniometry, through measuring the interior capacity of people's skulls, he could tell how intelligent or unintelligent that person was. He found--not so shockingly--that white people's skulls had an 87 cubic inch capacity, and Negroes' skulls only had a 78 cubic inch capacity. Result: Sorry, Negroes. God wanted you to be less intelligent than us white folks. Also, the Bible was interpreted to justify slavery in the early- to mid-1800's. ("Interpreted" is the key word there.) Around that same time a man, Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau,--yes, I had to look up that name--wrote, "An Essay on the Inequality of the Races." He proposed that there are three races in the world, white, yellow, and black, and that it is solely through contact with the white race that progress, or civilization, happened. Another man, Ernst Haeckel, used "science" to prove that blacks were most closely related to apes. Moreover, they were savages and were doomed to extinction. There were others who echoed his ideas and used science, from the study of skull shapes, brow ridges, hands, and feet, to come to the incontrovertable conclusion that whites were, in essence, the most human, and blacks were less human. (I, of course, grossly summarize, but this is the bottom line of many of these "scientists" findings.) Others, like Karl Voigt, believed that Negroes were literally a wholly separate species.                     basic information source

I first heard about these ideas in college. I believe it was in my Native American Tribes of Wisconsin course. We were learning about that horrid period in history when Native Americans were taken from their homes and sent away to schools where they would learn English and, hopefully, rid themselves of all their "savage" traditions and beliefs. This practice was justified, as I've pointed out above, through the aid of science that showed white people to be far superior and thus in a position--perhaps the only position--to guide and teach these lower humans. It was our duty. *said with condescending nod and patronizing raised eyebrows* For further proof of this "duty," look no further than Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden."

These are obviously not the only examples of this kind of thing, but I bring up the overall idea for the following reason: viewing another person as a lesser human clears one's conscience of marginalizing, cutting off, enslaving, or hurting that person. At worst this belief justifies the conscious and knowing removal of rights and happiness. At best this belief breeds pity and a parent-child relationship.

Growing up Mormon, I often heard the word "true" tossed around like it was nothing. I was raised to believe that what I believed was true and what everyone else believed was less-than-true or completely false. I distinctly recall feeling superior to some of the other kids in my classes in grade school. Their churches sounded silly to me, their prayers odd, their ideas fantastical and fairytale-ish. I felt bad for them, really. It's so sad that they don't have the knowledge that I have, I would think.

When I was 16, I got into a major debate with an acquaintance who was a born-again Christian. We agreed to each bring our scriptures and do our best to defend our positions. He prayed fervently that my eyes would be opened. I prayed fervently that God would guide my hand and help me to find the perfect scriptures that would prove that the LDS church was the only true one. Everything he said sounded ridiculous to me, and he shook his head with incredulity at everything I said. It went nowhere because we were each utterly and totally convinced of our own rightness. There was, in effect, nothing at all that would make one accept what the other was saying as truth. Nothing.

I have written about my first couple meetings with my bishop. I told him my whole life story and he nodded his head and smiled. He was compassionate and asked questions. I fooled myself into thinking that he was absorbing what I was saying and truly understanding where I was coming from. Of course this was not the case. I noticed that he talked about sacrifice a lot in our meetings. He talked about things in his life that he has had to sacrifice. He talked about realizing things about himself, even things that seemed an essential part of his person, that he needed to keep constant vigilance on. At our last meeting, two weeks ago, he started in again with sacrifice as he was interpreting the spiritual experience I had and the subsequent dream I had that night. (You can read about it here, if you didn't read the post.) It became clear that he had, in my opinion, missed the point; he picked out the pieces that worked with his world view and pieced them back together for my edification. But he did it deftly and was careful not to be too explicit in his advice. So I came out and asked him: "When you mention sacrifice, are you referring to my sexuality?" He hemmed and hawed and gave a response that didn't really answer my question, choosing instead to say that the answer lay between myself and God, knowing that God would never lead me astray and any "answer" I got that seemed to go against the church's teachings cold not possibly be of God.

But here's the point: I had poured my heart out to him. I had told him how "Men are that they might have joy," how I wanted a husband and children, how I wanted to devote myself to another person through thick and thin. I talked about the church's 13th Article of Faith, which states, "...If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." What could be more virtuous, lovely, and praiseworthy than two people, committed to each other for the rest of their lives, raising children to be good, honest people? Nothing could make more sense to me. Nothing could be more obvious.

But my words, as I knew they would, fell on deaf ears. A bishop would never see a gay relationship as virtuous. It wouldn't have mattered if I had found a hundred scriptures to prove my side of the argument, he wouldn't have accepted any of them because none of them, or at least not my interpretation of them, would fit with his religious and world views.

For the Church to have an across-the-board Law of Chastity for ALL its members, whether gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered, or anything in between, it would first have to accept those non-normative identities as part of God's Eternal Plan. It would have to come to terms with the biological origins of sexuality. It would have to fully embrace human diversity and see that diversity as part of The Divine. It would have to admit that being gay might not be a challenge of this mortal life, a burden that will magically be removed in the afterlife.

As a fascinating side note, a recent study showed that when asked directly, 11% of respondents self identified as being "not heterosexual." When asked indirectly, or more anonymously, that number went up to almost 20%. While this does not mean that 20% of the population is gay, it certainly points to the fact that 20% of the population seems to fall on the gayer end of the LGBT spectrum. One has to admit that that is a mighty big number, certainly larger than the Kinsey number of 10% that has been widely accepted as true. (read about the study here) For me, a study like this makes me want to throw my hands up in rejoice. "See!" I want to yell. "There is no way that God would say to himself, 'I am going to give one out of every five of my children this burden that I will expect them to spend their entire lives fighting.'" But would a devout religious person see these results and think the same thing? Will cold, hard evidence like this change the church's stance? Sadly, no. Because it does not see the legitimacy of that evidence.

In the LDS church, the family is of paramount importance. "Hey," says a lesbian woman, "I have a family, too! I have a beautiful wife and we have raised four amazing children together." Sorry, lesbian woman, the church doesn't include you in its definition of family. So no matter how dedicated you are to your partner or spouse, the church will never see your family as equal to its heterosexual counterpart.

In the LDS church, there can be no sexual relations before marriage. "That's awesome," says a young gay man, "I totally believe in waiting until I find a husband to have sex with him." Sorry, young gay man, even if you get married, your relationship still is not part of the church's definition of marriage, so you're still committing adultery.

In the LDS church, all humans are created in the image of their Heavenly Father. "Thank you," says a bisexual man, "I've felt so lost and confused all my life. It's so good to know that my Heavenly Father created me to be like Him." Whoa! Hold on there, bisexual man. That "image" has nothing to do with your innate sexuality. It only means that God also has two eyes, a nose, two ears, a mouth, etc. You're only like Him if you only have sex with women.

I think you get what I'm arguing here. Ms. Lyly's essay is wonderful and I agree with her completely. But, like all essays, articles, and websites that seek to make change, the only people who will read it and nod with approval are those who already share that world view. Confirmation bias is a very powerful force, like it or not. No matter how logical your argument, someone on the other side will still think you're crazy and believe that your facts are somehow flawed unless you suddenly come to your senses and admit that you were wrong all along and that they are right.

So the Church can go on flaunting its mormonsandgays website, but it really doesn't mean anything substantial. (Although I do concede that it is a definite step forward.) I still can't fall in love. I still can't get married. I still can't have a family that will be eternally together. Heck, according to Ms. Lyly's bishop, I can't even hold my boyfriend's hand. I can't have a boyfriend at all, even if we never touched each other at all, since that would be considered "acting on" my "homosexual attractions"! (If that's the case, maybe I should be thankful that I'm single?) If this Church really wants to say that it has the complete truth and fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then it might want to open its eyes and realize that it has a little ways to go yet.