Concrete guidance on gay dating while remaining a member in good standing?

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Say what?

I would be happy to answer any specific questions you may have.

[pogi]

25 minutes ago, rongo said:

The back scratchers or back rubbers who really go at it in sacrament meeting drive me nuts. 

Why? 

Sitting in a pew next to my wife for an hour is like the only time I can milk a back or hand massage out of my wife (yes, they are given in return - she prefers scratches).  

Edited January 11, 2022 by pogi

[Vanguard]

3 minutes ago, pogi said:

Why? 

Sitting in a pew next to my wife for an hour is like the only time I can milk a back or hand massage out of my wife (yes, they are given in return - she prefers scratches).  

My daughter and I go in shifts. During testimony meeting we change shift every 3 speakers. You can imagine how frustrated she gets if her 3 testimonies drone on. If it ends up being unfair by meeting's end, better luck next time. ; )

[kimpearson]

27 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

You make too much of my inquiry and paint with too much of a broad brush. Bottom line is that if you make concrete sweeping pronouncements about how there are literally hundreds of thousands (more than a million in your mind?) of LGBT in the LDS community you need to provide links to how you arrived at that number and be prepared to take questions. Simply stating as much will not suffice your self-professed, vaunted expertise in working with said community notwithstanding.

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-08834-y

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/11/national/social-issues/japan-lgbt-sexual-minority-survey/

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/how-many-people-lgbt/     The most conservative but also oldest I could find within the last 10 years

https://news.gallup.com/poll/329708/lgbt-identification-rises-latest-estimate.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation

I hope this enough to satisfy your requirements.  There at least a hundred more studies I could cite.

[The Nehor]

37 minutes ago, rongo said:

You don't know me very well.  

My wife does hold my arm, but we aren't even hand-holders (in public). I don't judge or look down on others, but I'm not a big hugger, either. Just a personal preference. 

The back scratchers or back rubbers who really go at it in sacrament meeting drive me nuts. 

When I said it was a cultural taboo I was going way beyond hand holding or a caress. Having sex in front of family members or even in public is not always taboo. That includes many Christian cultures too. The development of a public vs private life that must be kept separate is not a universal value.

And no, I am not saying this because I want that kind of culture. I am saying that it is probably dangerous to call things sins unless we are sure they are. It is also why the leadership are hesitant to lay down specific rules. In the past a lot of Americanisms didn’t go overseas. I mentioned the rated R movie counsel on my mission and no one in the room (all lifelong members) had ever heard of it. The idea that the equivalent rating was sinful or dangerous or anything was confusing to them.

[The Nehor]

53 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

You make too much of my inquiry and paint with too much of a broad brush. Bottom line is that if you make concrete sweeping pronouncements about how there are literally hundreds of thousands (more than a million in your mind?) of LGBT in the LDS community you need to provide links to how you arrived at that number and be prepared to take questions. Simply stating as much will not suffice your self-professed, vaunted expertise in working with said community notwithstanding.

Probably correct though I suspect a fair number of them don’t have problems. An asexual person is hardly noticed except by their spouse. Someone who is bi can slip under the radar pretty easily if they find a spouse. There is also doubtlessly some self-selection. I imagine people who identify as gay, lesbian, or trans are more likely to drift out of the church or drop out upon going out on their own. Some would give other reasons for leaving if they didn’t want to share the lgbtq ones.

[kimpearson]

6 hours ago, rongo said:

I think that the best thing for people in the Church who intend to live and embrace their homosexuality is to leave the Church, as you did. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and I think that many people are shocked to hear that at all, but my experience has been that only those dedicated to living the commandments as the Church sees them have any shot of successfully navigating it. And how long they are able to navigate it is another thing . . . 

The Church rightly teaches and emphasizes kindness, courtesy, and compassion to everyone, but must continue to be true to its principles. This means standing firm on this issue, and standing firm on this issue means that something has to give for those who are just as determined to be true to themselves, as they see it (i.e., embracing and not suppressing their homosexuality). 

All of the homosexuals I have worked with and counseled wanted to be able to live Church commandments at the time (one, a lesbian, has since left her husband and lives with a woman now. They had two teenage daughters when she left), so I never worked with someone like you (and those spotlighted in the article in the OP) who are looking for the Church to accommodate dating, marriage, DA (PDA is wrong in my book, hetero or straight.  Have some decorum and decency, and keep those things private), etc. I can really empathize with them, though, especially those who want to remain active in the Church. That's why I think that concrete guidance from the Brethren would be wonderful --- otherwise, local leaders are really left to their own devices. 

I don't really expect the Church to tackle this issue head-on. The Church for many years now has avoided addressing difficult issues directly. It sure could use it, though --- no matter where people are at on the issue. 

Here is an observation from my daily experience.  What about the mom's and dads, brother's and sister's, grandparents, uncles and aunts?  What are you suggesting they should do?  Do you think many of them just say to their child, just leave the Church while the rest of us will stay and fully support the Church that makes the best choice for the loved queer son or daughter to leave that Church.  Everyday I counsel with parents whose child just came out.  They are frantic for answers.  I watch as time goes by and every single parent with the exception of just a handful encourages their child to leave the Church for their own safety.  Then I watch the parents, siblings, grandparents and relatives start to question their own faith.  I would estimate 50% of parents either fully resign from church or stop attending within 5 years.  40% percent  of parents either  lose most of their testimony or radically change it but stay in the Church to advocate for change.  That leaves about 10% who keep their basic testimony but almost without fail even these parents come to believe the leaders are just wrong about the current teachings related to queer members.  I consider myself in the last category but I was a parent at one time that frantically went to my church leaders and fellow members and got absolutely nothing that really helped other than a very hollow we love you, we love your son.  I wish each of you could just spend a few hours reading the anguish and heartbreak of parents who realize that the church they have loved and gave their all too has rejected their child by offering no viable way to have a happy life in the Church.  Every week I currently see 40 to 50 families reaching out to us for help.  After Elder Holland's talk at BYU, we literally had over a hundred families reach out for help each week for several weeks.  The current Church practices and teachings are in a very real way damaging the very families it proclaims to serve.   (Everything above relates to the parent groups I belong to, I have no way to know how other parents that are not in the group are handling it.  About 3,000 families)

Edited January 11, 2022 by kimpearson

[Vanguard]

5 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

7 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-08834-y

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/11/national/social-issues/japan-lgbt-sexual-minority-survey/

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/how-many-people-lgbt/     The most conservative but also oldest I could find within the last 10 years

https://news.gallup.com/poll/329708/lgbt-identification-rises-latest-estimate.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation

I hope this enough to satisfy your requirements.  There at least a hundred more studies I could cite.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/11/national/social-issues/japan-lgbt-sexual-minority-survey/

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/how-many-people-lgbt/     The most conservative but also oldest I could find within the last 10 years

https://news.gallup.com/poll/329708/lgbt-identification-rises-latest-estimate.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation

I hope this enough to satisfy your requirements.  There at least a hundred more studies I could cite.

Now you make me feel bad. You don't have to throw links up to jump through some hoop you believe I am expecting. ; ) It just would have been nice at the onset for you to drop a link to lend some credence to your claim and then stylistically not appear (at least to me) to be quoting a fact as though it were as incontrovertible as the law of gravity.

What do you think about my contention that the numbers should be based on adults and not from the population as a whole? In other words, if there are 16 million members give or take, we can safely assume the vast majority of them are children can we not (6? 10? 12? million)? That being the case wouldn't the numbers to start with be considerably smaller? If there were 8 million former/active adult members in the world, your claim would have to be scaled much further down. It is that number that I believe would be a more meaningful indicator. And either way you slice it and as CB has pointed out, there are plenty of former/active LDS folks who identify as such. Carry on. : )      

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 hours ago, Teancum said:

Well even for heterosexuals dating, holding hands, kissing and hugging can lead to other things. 

Exactly! Which is why the (oft-ignored) guidance is universal.

[kimpearson]

29 minutes ago, Vanguard said:

Now you make me feel bad. You don't have to throw links up to jump through some hoop you believe I am expecting. ; ) It just would have been nice at the onset for you to drop a link to lend some credence to your claim and then stylistically not appear (at least to me) to be quoting a fact as though it were as incontrovertible as the law of gravity.

What do you think about my contention that the numbers should be based on adults and not from the population as a whole? In other words, if there are 16 million members give or take, we can safely assume the vast majority of them are children can we not (6? 10? 12? million)? That being the case wouldn't the numbers to start with be considerably smaller? If there were 8 million former/active adult members in the world, your claim would have to be scaled much further down. It is that number that I believe would be a more meaningful indicator. And either way you slice it and as CB has pointed out, there are plenty of former/active LDS folks who identify as such. Carry on. : )      

Still learning about the expectation of this group.  I made a bad assumption that those who would discuss this topic would be very aware of statistics on LGTBQ+ individuals.  As I point out above, your comment about children seems to imply, if I understand you correctly, that children can't be considered queer unless they are adults.  Please think about that carefully.  Many of the queer individuals I have listened to, identified they were different between 5 and 10.  As soon as they realized they were different they also realized in many cases that the way they were different was considered a bad thing.  They live a very painful life as children then teenagers.  I believe most of the current evidence supports the idea that babies are born queer for the most part.  If you look at the data I provided, you will notice the upward trend in those identifying as queer.  This seems to indicate that those under 18 years of age that will identify as queer is even higher than the current adult population.  Do we just ignore queer youth, children and babies or do we try to figure out a way to make the world work for them other than telling them to go sit in a corner and act like they aren't queer.

[SkyRock]

17 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

Here is an observation from my daily experience.  What about the mom's and dads, brother's and sister's, grandparents, uncles and aunts?  What are you suggesting they should do?  Do you think many of them just say to their child, just leave the Church while the rest of us will stay and fully support the Church that makes the best choice for the loved queer son or daughter to leave that Church.  Everyday I counsel with parents whose child just came out.  They are frantic for answers.  I watch as time goes by and every single parent with the exception of just a handful encourages their child to leave the Church for their own safety.  Then I watch the parents, siblings, grandparents and relatives start to question their own faith.  I would estimate 50% of parents either fully resign from church or stop attending within 5 years.  40% percent  of parents either  lose most of their testimony or radically change it but stay in the Church to advocate for change.  That leaves about 10% who keep their basic testimony but almost without fail even these parents come to believe the leaders are just wrong about the current teachings related to queer members.  I consider myself in the last category but I was a parent at one time that frantically went to my church leaders and fellow members and got absolutely nothing that really helped other than a very hollow we love you, we love your son.  I wish each of you could just spend a few hours reading the anguish and heartbreak of parents who realize that the church they have loved and gave their all too has rejected their child by offering no viable way to have a happy life in the Church.  Every week I currently see 40 to 50 families reaching out to us for help.  After Elder Holland's talk at BYU, we literally had over a hundred families reach out for help each week for several weeks.  The current Church practices and teachings are in a very real way damaging the very families it proclaims to serve.   (Everything above relates to the parent groups I belong to, I have no way to know how other parents that are not in the group are handling it.  About 3,000 families)

Kids grow up and leave the church all the time.   More than half of the youth in my ward growing up ended up out of the church, though none but my brother was gay.   They just left for various reasons and a few came back.

My spouse has 6 siblings and grew up in Salt Lake County.   All my in-laws left the church.  It happens.  They left because none of them, even the ones who went to 4 years of seminary, really developed their own testimony, none was converted. 

It is a trial to the parents.  Challenges and trials help us grow.   Being a parent is a great opportunity to grow as we struggle with the choices of our children.

[california boy]

14 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

Still learning about the expectation of this group.  I made a bad assumption that those who would discuss this topic would be very aware of statistics on LGTBQ+ individuals.  As I point out above, your comment about children seems to imply, if I understand you correctly, that children can't be considered queer unless they are adults.  Please think about that carefully.  Many of the queer individuals I have listened to, identified they were different between 5 and 10.  As soon as they realized they were different they also realized in many cases that the way they were different was considered a bad thing.  They live a very painful life as children then teenagers.  I believe most of the current evidence supports the idea that babies are born queer for the most part.  If you look at the data I provided, you will notice the upward trend in those identifying as queer.  This seems to indicate that those under 18 years of age that will identify as queer is even higher than the current adult population.  Do we just ignore queer youth, children and babies or do we try to figure out a way to make the world work for them other than telling them to go sit in a corner and act like they aren't queer.

I was 12 when I realized I was gay.  

[Hamba Tuhan]

21 minutes ago, california boy said:

I was 12 when I realized I was gay.  

I was nearly 15 when I was first introduced to the foreign concept of 'sexual identity'.

[Vanguard]

42 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

Still learning about the expectation of this group.  I made a bad assumption that those who would discuss this topic would be very aware of statistics on LGTBQ+ individuals.  As I point out above, your comment about children seems to imply, if I understand you correctly, that children can't be considered queer unless they are adults.  Please think about that carefully.  Many of the queer individuals I have listened to, identified they were different between 5 and 10.  As soon as they realized they were different they also realized in many cases that the way they were different was considered a bad thing.  They live a very painful life as children then teenagers.  I believe most of the current evidence supports the idea that babies are born queer for the most part.  If you look at the data I provided, you will notice the upward trend in those identifying as queer.  This seems to indicate that those under 18 years of age that will identify as queer is even higher than the current adult population.  Do we just ignore queer youth, children and babies or do we try to figure out a way to make the world work for them other than telling them to go sit in a corner and act like they aren't queer.

Fair enough points. I just think that if it's adults who are answering the questions for these studies then it is the adult population we should be referencing and not extrapolating these stats out to the youth as though it is a given. And I do understand it is very much a part of so many youth. Your contention also speaks to the idea that all of these youth knew from 'day 1' that they were a part of the LGBT community and I don't think that's necessarily the case.

[The Nehor]

18 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I was nearly 15 when I was first introduced to the foreign concept of 'sexual identity'.

I was probably about 8 when I started using the terminology as slurs. Probably around 10 when I knew vaguely what they really meant.

Ironically I was probably about 8 when I first encountered it in literature along with stuff that went beyond the identity. I don’t think my parents had any idea what was in the books they were buying for me.

Edited January 12, 2022 by The Nehor

[Hamba Tuhan]

10 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I was probably about 8 when I started using the terminology as slurs.

So you were running around at recess calling other kids 'heterosexuals'???

Quote

Ironically I was probably about 8 when I first encountered it in literature along with stuff that went beyond the identity. I don’t think my parents had any idea what was in the books they were buying for me.

A very large percentage of our 'reality' is socially constructed through storytelling.

[kimpearson]

1 hour ago, SkyRock said:

Kids grow up and leave the church all the time.   More than half of the youth in my ward growing up ended up out of the church, though none but my brother was gay.   They just left for various reasons and a few came back.

My spouse has 6 siblings and grew up in Salt Lake County.   All my in-laws left the church.  It happens.  They left because none of them, even the ones who went to 4 years of seminary, really developed their own testimony, none was converted. 

It is a trial to the parents.  Challenges and trials help us grow.   Being a parent is a great opportunity to grow as we struggle with the choices of our children.

It seems like you didn't carefully read my post.  I am telling you that my experience with parents tells me that having a queer child come out leads many of these parents to question the Church.  These parents just don't tell the child it's OK to leave the church and we will be OK.  The parents themselves very often leave the Church because of it's positions on queer members.  The experience is very different from having a child tell you they don't believe anymore.  Parents of children who have left the church over belief commonly hold hope that their child will regain belief someday and everything will be OK.  Parents of a queer child have no such hope and in fact if they believe current teachings, believe that they will never be with their queer child who chooses to pursue a queer relationship or transition.

[kimpearson]

13 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

So you were running around at recess calling other kids 'heterosexuals'???

A very large percentage of our 'reality' is socially constructed through storytelling.

So if I understand your comments, you are arguing that sexual attraction is the result of a social construct created by storytelling.

Are you saying children don't have any attraction to the opposite sex or same sex until the social construct creates it?

[Hamba Tuhan]

32 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

Are you saying children don't have any attraction to the opposite sex or same sex until the social construct creates it?

It depends on how you choose to define 'attraction'. In general, children tend to be attracted to individuals, not broad classes of people. In some societies, that pattern is allowed to continue. My father was certainly not a 'heterosexual' as 21st-century Western culture would construct that category.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan

[SkyRock]

29 minutes ago, kimpearson said:

It seems like you didn't carefully read my post.  I am telling you that my experience with parents tells me that having a queer child come out leads many of these parents to question the Church.  These parents just don't tell the child it's OK to leave the church and we will be OK.  The parents themselves very often leave the Church because of it's positions on queer members.  The experience is very different from having a child tell you they don't believe anymore.  Parents of children who have left the church over belief commonly hold hope that their child will regain belief someday and everything will be OK.  Parents of a queer child have no such hope and in fact if they believe current teachings, believe that they will never be with their queer child who chooses to pursue a queer relationship or transition.

No, you have a repeated failure to understand.  If these parents are questioning the church, do they really believe in it?  Or are they cultural Mormons who never developed a true testimony?

And "No such hope"?  Oh,  ye of little faith, captured by the current culture.    Lots of parents have had their children reject the gospel for generations.  It isn't new.   Some return, others don't. 

Any person can decide to put the will of God before their own.  Some people can, some refuse to do it.  Additionally, some parents tried to keep their children from every having pain and having to struggle.  Overcoming the natural man and our weaknesses is the key to growth and we all have weakness.  Preventing our children from having challenges and telling them they don't need to grow and develop means they never progress.  

If one or more of my children leave the church, I will do like Alma and pray for them.   I will be sad, but it will not challenge my testimony.  I have had far greater challenges to my testimony and greater reasons to leave the Church than something like this.  Through my trials, I have grown through my pain and suffering as I have conformed my will to God's.  Everyone can do the same.

 

[T-Shirt]

On 1/10/2022 at 3:49 PM, kimpearson said:

Just google it.  The incidence of queerness is uniform across the world.  Most reliable measures are 3% to 5% of the adult population is gay.

I Googled it and I am not sure your numbers are very accurate. I am not sure who gets to decide who the, "Most reliable sources" are, but from what I found, 3 -5 percent identify as LGBT, but only 1-2 percent identify as gay.

[Calm]

5 hours ago, kimpearson said:

One poster wanted to argue with me over one small group that is so small it literally has no statistical or practical relevance. 

There is no outside reference to humanity that sets statistical or practical relevance.  We decide for ourselves what is relevant and what isn’t.

Are you really saying that you are someone who dismisses sentiments like “no one left behind”?  That you are okay with allowing absolutes to erase the importance of a minority?  That you believe there are parts of a community that have no value to anyone else in the greater community, no value in and of themselves so there is no need to even recognize that they exist?  
 

I remember in my youth when some adults around me talked like that about gays and blacks. They didn’t know any, thought gays just kept to themselves and had no impact on their lives so it was a waste of time for them to have to consider them and they were annoyed and thought it was what we now call virtue signaling to mention gays or the queer community in conversation. Blacks were pushing themselves into places they weren’t ‘comfortable’, it would be better if everyone just stayed where and with whom they belonged and didn’t bother anyone else.  The on,y real result of trying to mix communities was conflict.  Why couldn’t everyone just take care of themselves and their own needs just like they and their group were managing to do just fine?  They saw no reason why they just couldn’t pretend in their day to day lives that the minorities didn’t exist.  Pretty much any minority was treated that way from what I could tell as they did not live with them, but at best might see some if driving across time.  There were some Samoans and Tongas in our ward, so that was one minority that was treated with respect, though rather paternal.

It bewilders me that while you are demanding that one group has value, you appear to find it so easy to disappear another group as if nonexistent.  Those ten people in that group matter as much as ten people belonging to a group of a million.  Individuals don’t only matter based on being part of a large group.

There are 1377 Totos in the world today.  That is much less than 10 in 5000.  Does that mean the Totos have no statistical value when speaking of the rest of the world.  Very likely.  But does that mean there is no practical relevance?  Will we not have lost anything to humanity as a whole if that number drops to 0?
 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006497119579137

Edited January 12, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I was nearly 15 when I was first introduced to the foreign concept of 'sexual identity'.

I was 16 iirc when I was introduced to the concept of sexual fluidity and it clicked and made big picture sense of what I saw happening around me and what I was reading in anthropology and psych books and later was taught and researched in college and personally because I never viewed myself as a “girl” (at least by the time I was 8 though I understood others saw me that way); I was not feminine in how I felt, nor was I masculine, I was just me.  I liked what I liked and saw no reason why I had to categorize it in my head as a girl thing or a boy thing.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, kimpearson said:

Parents of a queer child have no such hope and in fact if they believe current teachings, believe that they will never be with their queer child who chooses to pursue a queer relationship or transition

My child is queer, not a member anymore, proud of and very comfortable with that part of her and I am proud of her and happy she is at home with herself in many ways better than I am with myself and your description is completely contrary to my own experience except for “believe current teachings”.

You continue to make absolute statements that appear to want to disappear those that don’t fit your paradigm.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Calm

[kimpearson]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

My child is queer and your description is completely contrary to my own except for “believe current teachings”

That's fine.  I did explain that what I was sharing was based on the parents in the groups I am part of.  I am curious, what is you and your queer child's stories.  I would love to hear them.  I keep hoping for a story that shows both the family and the queer child having a good outcome and staying active in the Church that includes a queer child older than 40.  I have heard hundreds where everyone thought everything was great until the child grew into their 30's or 40's and then everything came apart.  I will admit that I have lost hope in ever hearing such a story personally from someone who lived it.  Many have told me they know of such stories but they will never offer names or the opportunity to personally talk to those involved.