What's the Price?

Once there was a young man full of hope for his future. He had been raised LDS, and he was a firm and devout believer in all its tenets and precepts. He held many callings. He served a mission. But there was always something nagging at him in the back of his mind. He was gay.

The story is a familiar one now, almost cliché, but it was anything but common for this man. His experience began well over 60 years ago, in a period when homosexuality was still considered a mental illness, when religious leaders did all they could to brush it under the rug and pretend that it didn't exist, when the idea of two men in a loving, committed relationship was so alien, the very possibility of it didn't occur to the vast majority of men (and women) who were attracted to their own sex.

This young man, I will call him Eldon, met Susan and got married and sealed in the temple shortly after returning from his mission (names are changed and details are left out for privacy reasons). After their third child was born, Eldon began a clandestine relationship with a young man in his ward. It didn't last very long, though, because the guilt ate Eldon up inside. He knew that this "lifestyle" would never lead to the things his church had taught him were good and right. So he went and talked to his bishop, confessing everything and laying all his vulnerabilities and insecurities out on the table.

The issue was, to put it simply, "taken care of" with swiftness. Bishops at that time didn't know what to do with issues like this. Eldon was counseled, basically, to end the relationship and never do it again. And that, as far as the church goes, was that.

After this episode, five more children came. The family was very active in the church. All their sons served missions. They were, by all accounts, a model LDS family.

Eldon thought he had won the war against his aberrant sexual identity. It was all behind him now. He was reading the scriptures and praying and teaching his children to do the same.

But then things started getting more difficult within Eldon, and maintaining his façade took more effort. His marriage began to show signs of strain. Arguments were more frequent and increasingly virulent. His and Susan's children saw what was happening, but they kept it to themselves, assuming that their parents would work out their issues; after all, raising eight children cannot have been easy. When their youngest child was in high school, Eldon began sleeping in a separate bedroom. There was talk of divorce.

For years, Susan had tried everything she could think of: she wore different clothes, changed her hair, and exercised and dieted, all to no avail. She felt unattractive and unwanted. Nothing she did, no matter how much she fought and pleaded, seemed to make Eldon love her the way she needed to be loved. Her husband was a stranger to her, and she felt like a stranger to him. He faded further and further away. She was at her wit's end and was on the verge of giving up.

When this was brought to their children, the backlash was immediate. By now there were many sons- and daughters-in-law and quite a few grandchildren. Their children refused to "allow" them to get a divorce. Eldon and Susan were told that they needed to work out whatever issues they had as a couple. Marriage, after all, was for eternity. They had been sealed in the temple. Divorce was simply not an option as far as their children were concerned. And so Eldon and Susan plugged along, each in their own bedroom, living under the same roof more as roommates than anything.

One summer day, years after their youngest child had moved out and started a family of his own, Eldon was doing yard work with Nathan, the boy that Eldon's oldest son Robert had adopted. Nathan was about 12 years old, and he had a reputation for being a troubled and manipulative kid and a compulsive liar. He had been in and out of foster homes for his whole life. He had been abused as a young child. Robert, who had been unable to have kids of his own, sought to give Nathan a loving home and some much-needed consistency and stability. While working in the yard, Nathan started to tease Eldon and wrestle playfully with him. The physical teasing progressed. Eldon knew exactly what was happening, and he knew that what was happening was terrible, the worst thing imaginable. But he allowed it to continue. The touching became intimate. A point of no return was crossed.

Internally,  the structure that Eldon had spent a lifetime diligently constructing,  the one that had been able to hide and suppress his authentic and real self from everyone, including himself, fell apart. So much work. So much trust. So much faith. All gone. All crumbled to dust. The intense rush of the one thing he had longed for his entire life, intimate companionship with another male, felt too good, too perfect, too amazing to stop--regardless of who it was giving it to him, even his own adopted grandson. He felt completely powerless to the explosion of 50 years of pent-up, locked-up, hidden-away feelings and emotions.

He knew what he had done was wrong in the very worst of ways. But the scene repeated itself on two more occasions.

Nathan eventually told Robert what was going on. He told Robert that his grandpa had been molesting him. Since Nathan had a reputation for lying, Robert did not believe him, but he confronted his father about it anyway. Eldon, to Robert's shock and dismay, broke down and confessed to all of it.

From here, the story plays out much like you would expect: Eldon, at 70 years old, was taken to jail and registered as a sex offender. He was forced to undergo myriad psychological tests (which showed that he had never been sexually attracted to women). His family was thrown into complete upheaval. Susan divorced him. His diabetes and bladder cancer eventually forced the police to remove him from jail and instead place him under house arrest, the police having decided that Eldon needed more medical care than they wanted to give. He is no longer allowed to be alone in the presence of anyone under the age of 18. To say that his children (and even grandchildren) were angry at him is, as you would think, an understatement. Not only did they all feel betrayed, but they questioned everything Eldon had ever done. Were there affairs with other men? Was he a pedophile? Did he abuse his other grandchildren?

Eldon is my grandfather. Susan is my grandmother. This is a true story. I remember spending weekends at my grandparents' house and wondering why my grandpa slept in a different room. I remember thinking that maybe he just snores too much. I sensed a distance between my grandparents, but I thought that was just the way their relationship was. They were always both stubborn people. My mom sat me down once and asked me, tears in her eyes, if my grandpa had ever done anything inappropriate to me. He had not. I was every bit as shocked as everyone else.

But here is my point: My dear grandmother spent so many heart-broken years wondering what was wrong with her, wondering why her husband wanted nothing to do with her. She felt rejected and unloved. For years and years she felt this way. My grandfather had wanted to do what he had been taught was right. He wanted to be a good person. And so he spent a lifetime burying his true self and lying to everyone around him. He, in his way, also felt alone and rejected, completely unable to give or receive the love that he truly needed. He kept everything bottled up inside for so long that it all eventually blew up in the most tragic of ways. It was a tragedy for both of them; they both deserved so much more happiness.

I am not at all saying that every mixed-orientation marriage will end like this. I am not at all saying that those who choose a life of celibacy will end up having sex with adolescents. But I do know that my grandparents' story is not unique. I do know that one cannot lie to oneself for an entire lifetime without some sort of eventual repercussion. And I do know that repercussions can affect many more people than just the one person who had suppressed his identity for 50 years.

I remember telling my mom, "This is exactly why I came out of the closet when I did. This is why I will not get married to a woman in an attempt to change myself. This is why I want to be true to who I am, even if it is hard for you to accept or understand."

There are lots of people who will write blogs, write defensive Facebook posts, write books, give talks, etc. about how happy they are in their mixed-orientation marriages or about how perfectly content and at peace they are living a celibate life. They live with the hope that it will all be worth it. They "know" that there will be blessings in the next life, that God will reward them for their earthly sacrifices with a glory that is so wonderful, we are unable to conceive of it. But how long can that hope last? For how long can one live on faith and hope alone? How many people need to get hurt in the process? How many children need to watch their parents divorce? How many wives need to sacrifice being sexually attractive to their husband, or vice versa?

When all is said and done, will God smile on all that? Will He say, "Well done" to a life lived in constant suppression or secrecy or denial?

As being gay (or having SSA, as some prefer to say) becomes more accepted, there are more people, both men and women, knowingly entering into marriages with someone who does not share their sexual orientation because it is this particular family set-up, a husband and a wife and children, that their church tells them is the only one that will guarantee their entrance into the highest degree of Heavenly Glory. I cannot and will not prescribe what anyone else should do with his or her life. I can concede that some of these marriages might indeed be happy and successful and spiritually (and maybe even sexually) fulfilling ones. I can't assume that everyone who chooses a life of celibacy is lying when he or she professes their happiness and contentment to the world. For some people, these choices might work perfectly well for them.

But I also know that it is impossible for anyone to see 50 years into the future, no matter how sure of ourselves and our beliefs we might be right now.

I'm certain that my grandfather, when he married my grandmother, when he was raising eight children, never imagined that one day he would molest his own grandson. All we know is what we feel right now and what we experience right now. We try to be the best we can be and do the best we can do. So I hope we realize that the choices we make have consequences, sometimes ones that won't be known for many, many years.

My instinct, based on my own truths, is to decry any religious teaching or practice that is based on a few passages from a book of scripture that has been proven to be altered, mistranslated, and taken out of context. My instinct is to beg everyone to embrace the identity they were born with, the one they were intended to have, and to live with unabashed authenticity. But we each have our own path to follow. We have our own journeys to make. And not all our journeys will have the same end point.

So instead I will ask that we all think carefully and critically about our decisions and motives. I will ask that we listen to and follow our heart of hearts and that we don't try to fool ourselves into thinking that an integral part of who we are will magically fade away if we tamp it down or lock it up or openly deny ourselves from having or experiencing it.