Orson Scott Card is a homophobe.  I don’t use that word lightly and disagree most of the time when someone is labeled a homophobe.  But he is.  Even worse is that he is the most dangerous kind of homophobe – the kind who doesn’t think he is one.  Self admitted homophobes will spew forth disgusting, degrading comments and may even act violently against gay people, but they are easily dismissed as “extreme” and “irrational”.  Mr. Card’s brand of homophobia is more dangerous because it lulls people into a attitude of intolerance and bigotry all the while convincing themselves that they are not only in the right, but acting and speaking out of some form of “tough love”.

It’s really disappointing, too.  Mr. Card has written some beautiful things, including his “Holding onto the ‘others’” article in the Mormon Times.  In this essay, he lament’s Mormon culture’s tendency to ostracize its nerdy and intellectual kids, ignoring them until they find their place in academia, often to leave the church behind.  It’s a poignant piece that obviously has some deep personal connection for him and has for several people I know, including me.  Unfortunately, however, this same man wrote an essay which included:

And if acceptable ways can be found to protect children from developing this reproductive dysfunction before it even manifests itself, or to shape society so as to encourage the least affected to achieve reproductive success — i.e., evolutionary normality — why would we not want to assure that the children we bear would be free of this dysfunction?
“Science on gays falls short”

How would it feel to be fourteen, gay, Mormon and read something like this?  I’ll tell you, it doesn’t make you feel very good about yourself.  I guess in his efforts to protect the nerdy kids from passive rejection, he’s also decided to actively reject and alienate the queer kids.  Accept the smart kids, try like hell to fix the gay ones, I guess.

It also is very frustrating his persistant coupling of homosexuality with pedophilia.  Twitter is all a rumble about the republishing of his novella, Hamlet’s Father.  In retelling of the Shakespeare play, Hamlet’s father is a gay pedophile who molested all of Hamlet’s friends which (of course) turned them all gay as well.  In a criticism of gay twins studies, Mr. Card suggested that the increased likelihood for twins to both be gay (2x for fraternal, 5x for identical) was that the similar appearance of the children would influence their likelihood of being molested, if they are attractive.  The unstated assumption is that the molestation, of course, would turn them gay:

The study does not allow for the possibility that the physical appearance of the subjects might have played a role. If seduction, molestation, or other sexual trauma contributes to homosexuality, and if those are influenced by the perceived attractiveness of the subject to a molester, seducer, or rapist, then the greater physical resemblance between identical twins may account for some of the results.
“Science on gays falls short”

C’mon, that’s messed up.

Of course, this would be less maddening of Mr. Card, a National Organization for Marriage board member, didn’t constantly try and convince us that he doesn’t have a problem with gay people, insisting he has more of a centrist role, “I suppose I can take some comfort from the fact that over the years I have been savaged both for showing too much sympathy for the ‘abomination’ of homosexuality and for showing too much ‘homophobic’ opposition to the political agenda of the radical homosexual community.”   He even asserts that:

“The hypocrites of homosexuality are, of course, already preparing to answer these statements by accusing me of homophobia, gay-bashing, bigotry, intolerance; but nothing that I have said here — and nothing that has been said by any of the prophets or any of the Church leaders who have dealt with this issue — can be construed as advocating, encouraging, or even allowing harsh personal treatment of individuals who are unable to resist the temptation to have sexual relations with persons of the same sex.”
“The Hypocrites of Homosexuality“

This is from an essay in which he encourages the illegalization of homosexuality, being a threat to civilized society.  He repeats that homosexuality should not be met with violence and seems to make a effort to prove he doesn’t hate gays by using the fact that he brushed on the topic of homosexuality in his story, Songmaster, which, again, couples homosexuality with child molestation.

Mr. Card was a vocal advocate for the passing of Prop 8 in California, during which he wrote an article saying:

“However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. They are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is. They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won’t be married. They’ll just be playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes.”
“Homosexual ‘Marriage’ and Civilization”

Somehow is a legal gay marriage not only less valid to him, but it takes away from the validity of his own marriage.  If you’ll forgive a C.S. Lewis quote (who, in turn was quoted by President Ezra Taft Benson in his 1989 Conference talk):

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”
Mere Christianity

I’m going to move on from that one.

In the end, I really don’t care what Orson Scott Card thinks about me.  I’m almost 30 years old and my self esteem doesn’t hinge on the illogical writings of a YA sci-fi novelist, but I do denounce him on the basis that he is a YA sci-fi novelist.  YA as in Young Adult as in read by kids and teenagers.  Some of whom are nerdy.  Some of whom read his “Holding onto the ‘others’” essay with tears in their eyes longing for those in their ward to recognize them, too.  Longing to be accepted for who they are, as he calls for.  Some of whom are also gay and read his other writings that say that being gay is something to be fixed, that a gay relationship is, by nature, inferior to a straight relationship.  This gay nerdy kid who will make the very, very short leap to assume that he, by nature, is inferior to a straight person.

I’m hoping this gay, nerdy, Mormon kid will find his or her way over to the It Gets Better Project and watch video after video of successful, happy gay people urging that kid to just hold on, that it will get better, that they will eventually find people who will love them for who they are.

Orson Scott Card is wrong.

(humming that M.I.A. song from her last album)

Okay, so you’re back and you’ve deduced from the title of this post that I completely identify with the vast majority of that post (with a couple of exceptions that I’ll get to in a bit).  My spineless jellyfishery isn’t a lifelong ailment, however, but more of a acquired illness brought about, primarily, by an allergic reaction to blogging.

Let me ‘splain.

I didn’t used to have a problem saying what I thought.  In fact, one could easily have made the argument in high school that I said what I thought a little too much…and a little too harshly.  Simply put, I was kind of a douche.  Not a total douche, mind you, but still pretty douchey.  All this was a defense mechanism, of course, because of  yadda yadda yadda gay yadda low self esteem yadda yadda football.  Fast forward to college where I made some friends who liked me for me and I mellowed out a bit, learned to carry on a conversation without being completely condescending and discovered a few viewpoints that were different from my own and yet didn’t seem completely wrong.

Then I started blogging.  Not this blog, average life, of course.  This blog was what blogs originally were: random, boring (even to people who liked me), and  completely unreadable.  Then I decided to start a blog where I would try to be the opposite of those things.  Weirdly enough, people started reading.  And when I mean “people”, I mean low triple digits…very low.  Sometimes I’d spike into mid-triple digits when someone more interesting would link to me, but Pioneer Woman, it wasn’t.

Still, I began to obsess over this blog.  Was the content funny enough?  Insightful enough?  How could I increase readership?  How much snark was too much snark?  What made matters worse was that the blog was about an issue that was really sensitive to me at the time.  On a personal level, some people that I had known started to think about me differently.  It was rare that their opinion of me was negative, but opinions did change, even it was only to something different than before.  My opinions started shifting, too.

And I panicked.

I’d spent much of my high school years without many friends I felt I could be myself around (not necessarily their fault) and I knew I couldn’t go back to that.  And so to prevent myself from losing my friends and family, I stopped talking.  Not completely, of course, but I stopped expressing opinions that I felt might offend, completely ignoring the fact that many of my friends shared a lot of the same opinions as me.  I mean, we were friends, after all.  I still expressed opinions (ask me how I feel about Michael Moore), but they were ones that dealt with subject matter so niche that often I was the only one in a group that had an opinion of it, which made it safe.

Still, I started avoiding confrontations that might have arisen from politics, religion, my choices, and anything else that I thought might cause tension.  It was ridiculous to the point that even around people who were simply expressing opinions that I agreed with, I would still avoid the conversation and remain silent.  I became overly concerned about my own image and what people perceived that I was.  This usually manifested itself at keeping everyone at arm’s length except for my closest of friends and even they were kept farther away that I should have.

So, I’m kind of done with that.

I developed these bad habits and they will probably take a while to break, but at least I’m making an effort to rediscover my hidden Opinion.  I see no need to be a jerk or beligerant, but avoiding confrontation and controversy have only resulted in me being an uninteresting and evasive.  Which, blech.  So, If you aren’t my friend and you don’t like me, okay.  If you are someone new and you don’t like me, well that’s a shame.  If you are a friend and you don’t like me, we should probably talk about it and if you still don’t like me, well maybe we should just move on.  I’ll survive.  By contrast, if you do like me, I’ll try to do better about letting you in.  I’ll be difficult for me, but I’m working on it.  If you ask me my opinion, I’ll give it to you.

Here, let’s try it out for a bit:

1. Don’t you just love the Daily Show?
   It’s funny and all, but I think it fosters a little too much cynicism.  While our political system has a lot…lot of problems, I think that it also requires a bit of idealism in order to work well.  Just look at the friggin’ lunar landings.  They were essentially a PR stunt by Kennedy that wrecked the Federal budget.  It was money that could have been used to help the needy, tax rebates, whatever your cause, but in the end, it was a creative phenomenon that united the American people in something that wasn’t war and inspired a generation of scientists.  Sometimes you have to dream and lift up, not make your living by only taking pot shots.  Wait, I take it back.  Something that invalidates my entire point was Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity – particularly his end speech.  True, the whole show was just that, a show, but his closing speech of the event was truly inspring.  You’re alright, Mr. Stewart.
2. Do you think the church will ever accept homosexuality?
   No, or at the very least, not in my lifetime.  One could easily point out the fundamental doctrinal incompatibilities, but the church has done complete 180′s on fundamental doctrines before (whether it admits they are 180′s or not).  Still, more importantly, the church has absolutely no motivation to change on this issue.  Some estimate that up to ten percent of the population reside somewhere east of “straight” on the Kinsey scale.  My personal view is that number is less than five percent.  The church isn’t going to fundamentally rewrite their doctrine to accommodate five to ten percent of their population – especially when the other 90 to 95 percent are mostly opposed.  The economics don’t work out; it isn’t going to happen.
3. Do you think Obama will win in 2012?
   I hope so.  I actually like Obama’s generally rational and compromising approach to governance and that many of the things he said in his campaign that he was going to do, he actually did or is in the process of doing.  I think his foreign policy could use a little experience, but domestically, I find his actions and words to be respectable and responsible, even if I strongly agree with some of them.
4. Did you really go to an all-white school when you were a kid?
   I did, and I’m not proud of it.  I understand the decisions that were made that caused me to go to school there.  I recognize that there weren’t many options and of those, there weren’t any good options.  Still, I’m glad that it closed down ten years ago.  Schools like that are still around in the rural south, but they shouldn’t be, which is an obvious fact to anyone who doesn’t live in the areas where they still exist.
5. What was the part of that blog post did you not agree with?
   Mostly the part about resisting the urge to resist the urge to swear.  While swearing has its place mostly, however, it’s just lazy.  If you learn more words, you just might be able to express yourself more effectively.  If you want to be edgy, be edgy with what you say, the words you use to say it, because the effectiveness of that fades.
6. What did you think about the season finale of Glee?
   I hate Glee.  Aside from the fact that I find most non-diegetic singing in TV and film to be jarring, I hate the fact that Chris Colfer’s character, Kurt is lauded as a role-model for gay teens.  He’s a selfish, abrasive, attention whore.  I’m not against the femmy little gays having a role model because heaven knows their lives can be pretty bad, but surely you can do better than Kurt.  Also, how about a throwing in some role models for the less flamboyant gays out there while we’re at it?  Gay culture can celebrate its more in-your-face members all they want (and more power to them), but by mostly ignoring the rest of us, it makes it harder for us to identify with you.

Wow, those weren’t really that controversial…  Hence, the Alanis Morissette-style irony of this whole situation.

Peace out.

My current existential quandary deals with, as usual, the direction of my life.

The main problem with striking out in a new direction is that the path, being relatively untrodden, is overgrown and dense and I’ve never been great with a machete. But, metaphors aside, there is quite a bit of ambiguity in the future that I’m wondering about, which is not uncommon, I suppose. The future for most people is not super forthcoming. For me, I’m realizing more and more that I want my future to include marriage (depending on the state) and family. This is no huge surprise to anyone that knows me or even to myself, but what is surprising is my strength of conviction on this point. I’m finding myself becoming more and more willing to “do what it takes” achieve this goal.

Given such an attitude, one would assume that I would attach myself to any suitable candidate like a BYU freshman (sorry, guys), but I’ve even surprised myself at how my pickiness is growing. I don’t believe in the “right person”, but I do believe in the “wrong person” and it appears that that particular list is growing. While this seems contradictory to the “do whatever it takes comment”, I think that that manifests itself more in the willingness to push myself out of my comfort zone to place myself in situations where I can meet new people. The problem I’m finding with this, however, is that, by definition, I’m not comfortable and my defenses go into overdrive, locking me down emotionally to the point that it’s almost impossible to get in. So, while I’m doing better about meeting new people, I’m doing worse about letting people have emotional access. Or maybe I’m willing to settle, it’s just the points I’m not willing to settle on aren’t easily found amongst eligible suitors.

Maybe I’ll just move to Utah, since, you know, that always solves everyone’s problems. Heh.

I acknowledge there wasn’t a point to this. I’m not even going to read over it to check for grammar and spelling errors. It’s simply what’s going through my head as the wind sifts through my hair and beachcombers look for crabs with their flashlights.

Maybe if I wait here long enough, the waves, which have seen everything since time began, will explain how all of this is supposed to work.

Nevermind, here come some rednecks; I’m heading back to the condo.

Several questions focused on Vowell’s writing style, which often focuses on the significance of small moments or attaches sentiment to (probably) insignificant artifacts.  After discussing her research for Assassination Vacation, a book that in which she writes about all of the U.S. presidents who have the distinction of being shot while in office (with the exception of JFK, he being far too recent to capture her imagination), she describes the only moment in which President Garfield has a glimmer of non-dullness in his writings is when he mentions his love of books.  He would sit sideways in his reading chair sideways (“like a teenager”, she describes) to the point that the chair is tilted to this day.  It’s those insights and moments that are characteristically Sarah Vowell.

One question asked her how she looks for those moments, to which she replied, “you can’t really look for them,” insisting that they just happen and you have to be paying attention in order to recognize them since they will often occur in ways you won’t expect.

Another audience member asked, “so, do you make those connections while researching or later?  I mean, when do you-”

“Make mountains out of molehills?” she interrupted and admitted that many times those insights happen in hindsight, noting the metaphor she used in Unfamiliar Fishes of the strangler fig she saw in Hawaii representing the U.S. expanding and driving out everything it touches wasn’t the first thing she thought of when she saw the tree.  When she first saw the tree with its twisted roots and sprawling branches she thought, “that looks like my brain.”

She explained that it was all just the process of writing.  “The parts of my life where I am most alive is when I’m sad,” she explained to the chuckling audience.  “I mean, there are days where I wake up, go to a matinée with my friend, do random stuff, and then go to bed, but I don’t write about it.  But that was a good day.  Or when I’m spending time and happy with my family.  We enjoy it, but no one wants to read about that and I don’t want to write about it.”

I extremely enjoyed the evening, not only because I love listening to Sarah Vowell read her writing in her own voice, but also because her writing process as she described it was one of the most similar to my own that I’ve come across.  True, Ms. Vowell is an accomplished author of historical non-fiction and I blog…sometimes…but some of the ideas are still the same.  I essentially will take a moment from my life (preferably from the mid-to-far distant past) and built a narrative around it.  I sometimes recognize those moments when I’m experiencing them, but other times those moments are recognized later.  The narrative is non-fiction, but liberties are taken with chronology, contexts, and ideas in order to make the narrative more interesting.  Did the story happen?  Yes.  Did the story happen in that exact order, was a conversation included in its entirety, or were my thoughts represented exactly as I thought them at the time?  …Maybe, if they help the story, but if not they are omitted, rearranged, or reshaped.

I also tend to focus on the parts of my life where there has been the most conflict, emotion, or, at least, cause for mockery simply because it makes for a better story.  While I’m a supporter of journaling, this blog (and my past blogs) are written to be read by someone other than myself.  While I had a wonderful time cooking for my friends when they came over to watch Conference, or spending the afternoon hanging out with the Marrieds and their kids while they did craft project, I don’t write it, because it isn’t a good story.  But they were good days.

As such, one could easily get a very skewed view of what my life is like with all of its angst and confusion, but the reality is that I’m actually quite happy.  Of course, this hasn’t always been the case and there were several periods of my life where I was very unhappy, indeed, even for long periods of time, but things haven’t been like that for quite a while.  My life, fortunately, has been quite good in the past few years.  I have wonderful friends, married and single (just covering myself there), with whom I feel at home.  I like my job and it affords me the opportunity to do things like fly to Seattle for the weekend on a whim (May! Whoohoo!).  My life isn’t perfect and there are days when I feel sad, lonely, or whatever, but those days are the exception, not the rule.  Most of my life is happy.  Just don’t expect me to write too much about it.

Because happy is boring.

:-)

The reason I was in Utah was the party that was going on in the house behind me.  It was a monthly get-together for gay Mormons that was held by a family in the west valley.  After hearing about the party for months, I had bought a plane ticket at the last minute and had flown out to attend.  I had shuttered my blog a few months previously and was feeling a little out of touch and I had hoped that meeting some of the people whose blogs I had read for years would help me to feel a kinship with others like me.  I had found, however, that conversation didn’t come easily and as the evening progressed, I talked less and less until I wasn’t talking at all.  I slipped out the front door and called my sister, needing to hear a familiar voice.

I told her I was at the party, but was having a hard time connecting with anyone on a conversational level, that many of the people there was younger than me, and that it was kind of awkward.  I hadn’t told her who were the principle attendants at the party, however, an omission that made me feel a separation between us.  After talking for about half an hour, the conversation ended and I sat down on the curb, not ready to go back inside.  I could hear the hiss of sprinkler systems in the subdivision around me.  Man, suburbs like this creeped me out.

A couple of guys walked up the sidewalk and I pretended to be sending a text so I didn’t have to interact more than a half-smile and nod.  They half-smiled and nodded back and went into the party.  My insides sank as I pocketed my phone.  I had flown all that way to finally meet a group of people who were like me, who knew what I felt, only to find that I actually didn’t have much in common with most of them.  Most everyone was younger than me and their conversations revolved around more stereotypically gay interests, things that I didn’t have much interest in.  Everyone else was older and their conversation consisted of activism and theories of orientation, having fought the fight for so long that they didn’t know how to stop fighting, even at a party.  There were even a few married guys with their wives.

I didn’t really belong there.

My sister’s voice had provided some comfort but after talking around the fact that I was at a social for gay Mormons, I saw another world in which I didn’t completely fit.

And so I sat on the curb.

The air grew more chilly as the sun set.  I decided that since I had spend five hours on a plane, I had probably at least give the party a second shot.  I went back into the house and tried mingling a bit more, but again I found myself quietly drifting into corners.  After a while it had finally grown dark enough to set up a projector and the host slid in a DVD of a gay movie in which there was singing, dancing, and glitter.  I sighed and wondered how early was too early to leave.

As everyone rearranged into a more movie-friendly formation, I saw a woman across the room quiety sinking into her own corner, not quite sure what to do.  She was older, in her late fifties, probably.  I recognized her as one of the wives there with her husband.  I got up, grabbed a soft drink, slipped in next to her.

“What?  You’re not excited to watch this movie?” I said with a friendly smile that I had to force a bit after the course of the evening.

“No,” she said with a slight chuckle.

“Um…do you want to go out on the deck?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said with what sounded like relief.

She went and got her coat and told her husband where she was headed, he having been so caught up in the conversations of the evening that he hadn’t noticed that she had drifted away from him.

We sat out on the deck and listened to the sound of the heat pumps whirring around the neighborhood.

“No you guys come to these things regularly?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, “he only told me he was…attracted to men…a couple months ago.”

“Really?” I said, disbelieving.

“Oh, yes.  I had no idea.  He found out about these get-togethers and it was really important to him to meet other people to talk to.  So, we came,” she said.

I was amazed that he was brave enough to come having only come out to his wife two months prior.  I was more amazed at her for coming, too.

“You did seem a little out of your element, I guess,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied, “I’m still not used to the idea of all of this,” she said motioning to the people in the house, who were by now engrossed in the movie.  I heard one of the musical numbers start up.

I sighed.  “Yeah, I guess neither am I,” I admitted.

“You know what I kept thinking tonight?” she said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“What a waste,” she replied, “here you have all of these wonderful young men who would make excellent husbands and fathers, but they probably will never have families.  It’s just a waste.”

I wasn’t sure if I should feel offended or complemented, but I saw the lost look in her eyes and I decided that I would take it as a complement and so I smiled.

We talked more and she told me about her children and grandchildren (whom she saw no need to tell about their father, she added).  She asked me how my family and friends reacted when I told them and I said that they had generally reacted rather positively, or no real reaction at all.  We continued talking about this and that until the movie ended and then we talked a bit further still.  Occasionally one of the other wives would come and check on her and seeing that we showed no desire to go back inside, they soon defected back to the party.

I didn’t care.  We just kept talking.

“I mean, I don’t really need a new computer; the one I have works fine.”

“I have no desire to get an advanced degree.”

“Hey, Tony Hawk just got here.”

“Le canard, s’il vous plaît.“

Anything from my last post.

“I don’t really watch TV that much.”

“There’s Paramount Pictures, where should we park?”

“I’m going to bed; I have a meeting at the CDC tomorrow.”

“Housekeeping.”

“I definitely don’t want to be in charge of other people.”

“The last Michael Crichton book really wasn’t that good.”

“QUIET ON THE SET!”

“I think I’ve gained weight.”

“I don’t really want to be a director.”

“I’ll have the black bean burger, please.”

Of course, this last one would be more believable with the addition of the next line: “With bacon.”

I often cooked when I had a free night.  I wasn’t very good, the food often ended up rather bland, but I enjoyed it.  As I stirred, I thought about one day cooking for other people, but the thought didn’t settle anywhere and floated out of my mind as easily as it had entered it.  It’d been over a month since my most recent breakup and I was starting to settle back into my single life.  It was getting easier and easier to switch back into seeing my future as a single person and I wondered if one day I wouldn’t be able to switch into thinking about the future and having someone else be there as well.

As I stirred, I stretched my other arm to the sink, pan in hand.  I flipped on the faucet with the pan and filled it up, mostly to see if I could.  I turned off the water and placed the pan on one of the stove’s other eyes.

Even though the thought that I might get to the point later in life where I had lived singly for long enough that I was incapable of a relationship sounded like an emo thought, I was actually unbothered.  I had learned a lot about myself in the past few years and I realized that the things I was looking for in a man were severely limiting my dating options.  In the past, I had ascribed to Spencer W. Kimball’s teaching that “it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price”.  If both of us worked hard enough at it, I could make a relationship work with any good person.  Well, after dating several good women and several good men without permanent success, something had to be wrong with the formula.  Either:

1. The person I was dating wasn’t a good person.
   While I’ve dated people who weren’t perfect, most of them have actually been decent, caring individuals.  So this one was out.
2. I wasn’t a good person.
   Well, I definitely had some flaws, but I didn’t classify myself as a bad person.
3. We weren’t willing to pay the price.
   Hmm… This one is interesting.  With women, I certainly wasn’t willing to pay the price as, for me, it tended to involve me to sinking into some pretty dark places, but with the men I’ve dated, I think it certainly could be said that we worked quite hard at making the relationship work.  In the end, though, it wasn’t enough.

So what else could it have been?  True, President Kimball probably wasn’t really expecting his words to be applied to relationships between two men, but that doesn’t mean that his thoughts didn’t have value.  So if two good people who worked really hard at a relationship failed there had to be more to it, right?

And as it turns out, there was.

Later in his talk President Kimball outlined more thoughts on building a successful relationship:

First, there must be the proper approach toward marriage, which contemplates the selection of a spouse who reaches as nearly as possible the pinnacle of perfection in all the matters which are of importance to the individuals. (emphasis added)

Aha!  So, it wasn’t really any good man and good woman (or man, whatever), but the two had be perfect for each other in all the areas that were the most important.

The water was coming to a boil, so I dropped in the angel hair pasta.  I also poured some olive oil into a skillet and started to heat it up and tossed some diced Roma tomatoes, chopped parsley, spices, and shredded parmesan into the sauce.

True, I hadn’t dated tons, but I had dated enough to know the things that I was looking for, things that the guy would have to be fairly perfect in.  But running the numbers didn’t seem too promising.

The person had to be a person: ~6,000,000,000 candidates
Call me old fashioned, but I wanted to be with another human.

Yeah, he’s going to have to be a “he”: ~3,000,000,000 candidates
This was one area where perfection was a must.

He’s going to want me to be a “he”, too: ~150,000,000 candidates
I had heard estimates the the percentage of people who were gay was around 10%.  I considered that to be way too high and settled for a still-generous-sounding 5%.

Into the olive oil, I dropped the green beans and the chopped almonds that I had almost forgotten I bought when I was at the farmer’s market.  The beans were damp and started to spatter.

Mormon background: ~250,000 candidates
Okay, this number was probably high by at least 50%, but it was about 5% of the 10 million Mormons on the books (divided by two).  This didn’t account for the fact that there was more women in the church than men and didn’t account for inactive or former members, but I had to start somewhere.  Also, this was the requirement that I had the least surety about.  I liked to think I would be fine dating someone who never had any real connection with the church, but it was hard to deny that I really wanted to be with a Mormon (or former Mormon).

A guy who wanted a family: ~10,000 candidates
Big hit here.  I had met more gays who wanted to legalize gay marriage more than they wanted to get gay married (other than a nebulous “yeah, you know, someday”).  Another reason for the big number drop was the likelihood of a Mormon gay to make his family the old fashioned way.

A guy who wasn’t threatened by my participation in the Church: ~500 candidates
Things were starting to look pretty sparse here.  As much as they wanted to respect other peoples opinion, many of the gays I’d met ended up being unnerved by my continued participation in the Church, especially post-Prop 8.  It was true that my relationship with the Church had evolved over the last few years – I discovered that too much exposure to the Church caused very undesirable side-effects in me while no contact at all had unfortunate consequences of its own.  There were plenty of things I thought the Church could do better, for sure, but the Church was always going to play some role in my life and anyone I dated was going to have to be okay with that.

I pulled the beans off the heat and sprinkled it with grated parmesan cheese.  I stirred the sauce some more as it sat warming on the low burner.  A large drop sloshed out and splattered on the floor.  I was wondering if I was going to make it through the meal without making a mess.  Nope.

Reasonably attractive: ~150 candidates
I wasn’t overly picky when it came to a guy’s appearance.  I was pretty thin, so I was self-conscious around guys who were much bigger than me, plus someone around my age, plus or minus five years or so, but what made a guy really attractive was common interests and personality, which brought me to:

A guy with whom I shared similar interests and who had a good personality: ~0.75 candidates
So out there was a cute, funny guy who was a little nerdy, raised Mormon, wanting to eventually start a family and was, apparently, about 4 foot tall.  Given the distribution of the world’s population, though, I’d probably have to learn Korean or something.

Dealbreaker.

I put some of the pasta on my place and poured the sauce over it.  The parmesan was melted over the green beans and the toasted almonds smelled a little like popcorn, which I decided was a success.  I scooped them up and put them next to pasta and sat at the table.  The food was blandish per usual and while I ate I opened my laptop.  The email chain that some friends started in order to arrange a viewing of Dial M for Murder devolved into a discussion of the position of a certain overly-tan Swedish male model on the hotness scale.  I contributed my opinion.  I emailed former coworkers asking what time we should meet up to eat at the new pizza place in West Midtown that was all the rage amongst the foodie-wannabes.  I read the message from Carrie that settled on Friday as the tentative day to go watch Rango.  I perused The Pioneer Woman for recipes to make with Jessica A. for the rest of our friends.  I sent a Twitter DM to the Terry’s asking what would be a good evening to spend time with them and their adorable three month-old daughter.  It was true, I likely was never going find a man with whom I’d fall madly in love, get married in one of those five states, and adopt a couple of crack-addicted Chinese girl babies, but, you know, whatever.

I could always just buy a motorcycle.

The methodology for the experiment was clear: in order to finally resolve my sexuality and my religion, I had to have an accurate picture of what both sides involved.  Since I had about twenty-seven years of Mormonism under my belt, including a two-year mission, I felt I could check off that one.  That just left the Other Side, which meant that I would have to do what terrified me more than anything else – go on a date with a dude.

In order for the experiment to be a success, a strict protocol had to be followed:

1. I had to tell someone.
   Secretly going on dates with guys was a sure way to get myself a heroin habit, I knew that I needed to let other people in on my plan.  I chose three people: my Mom who, as expected, was opposed, my roommate who took this as a sign to move out, and my friend Ashley, who’s reaction was a welcomed display of subdued support.  With Ashley there to check my arm for track marks, I pushed forward.
2. The “rules of dating” had to be the same.
   I couldn’t do anything with a guy that I wouldn’t do with a girl…wait…I couldn’t do anything that would get me in trouble with a girl…or I couldn’t…you know what I mean.
3. I had to actually follow through with it.
   The experiment had to go for a minimum of three months of frequent dating – or as frequent as I could get however.  I mean, what if I liked men, but men didn’t like me? …Anyway, I had to actually do this, no chickening out, so I signed up for a gay dating website, uploaded some SFW pictures and started browsing.

Which brought me to the used bookstore in the Poncey Highlands.  I was early because I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of timing travel from my new apartment in Midtown – a tiny studio off Peachtree Street.  In our messaging online, he had come across as a voracious reader.  I liked the idea of being well-read, but in practice I found myself to be much more pedestrian, my cultural intake being mostly independent films in which no one smiled and no one’s ending was happy.  He also had a knack for telling stories and I seemed that he was unlikely to hit me over the head with a tire-iron, dismember my body, and scatter my remains over the Chattahoochee.  So, when he suggested we meet at the bookstore, I agreed.

With each passing minute, my the butterflies in my stomach became more and more feral, sharpening their demonic claws on my insides.  Even though it was only a couple of minutes past the decided meeting time, I wondered how long would have to pass before I would classify as being stood up.  I mean, maybe the rules for gay dating were differ- I walked around the corner to see him standing right in front of me.  Being our first time meeting, it took me a second to realize that it was him.  I first noticed his hair, which was styled into a mild faux-hawk and underneath that, his dark eyes sat behind thin-wire glasses.  He was my height and was slightly thinner that me, which wasn’t something very common.  He smiled a crooked grin, “hey.”

“Hey,” I exhaled.  A feeling of relief flooded over me, which I thought was in response to the fact that I thought him to be cuter than his pictures online, but was more likely because my “hey” was the first real breath I had taken in minutes.

The first few words were awkward.  I tried to be charming.  So did he.

He asked what we should do and I suggested we walk to the Majestic Diner on Ponce.  Built in the twenties, it was a 24 hour diner whose food was mediocre, but had the best people-watching in the city as it was frequented by hipsters, goths, trannies, business men, yuppies, queers, and freaks alike.  With women, it had been my “weed-out” restaurant.  If they couldn’t understand the charm of the Majestic Diner, there was no hope.  I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be a problem with him.

It wasn’t.

I ordered too much food – forgetting that nervousness caused me to lose my appetite.  Our conversation stretched for almost a couple of hours as the pierced, tattooed waitress kept refilling our water glasses.  We finally decided to put her out of her misery and pay the bill.  He paid for his meal and I paid for mine – answering another question I had about gay dating.  Not wanting the evening to end just yet, I asked if he had seen Juno.  He hadn’t (and I didn’t reveal that I already had), so we headed to the Midtown Art Cinema for the late show.

As the movie started, the audience remained sparse and I welcomed the familiar setting (and movie) to calm my jittery nerves.  For the next hour and a half, I could allow myself to concentrate on the movie and not focus that I was on a date with another man.  He leaned over to ask me something – or so I thought.  Actually he had leaned in and placed his hand in mine.

Holy.  Crap.

I sat paralyzed in my seat.  The butterflies were using the nuclear option and I felt like throwing up.  I wondered what he would think if I bolted from the theater and ran to the nearest bathroom.  Of course, if I did that I would have to let go of his hand, which, at that moment, was the last thing I wanted to do.

Even so, I’ve had a long, overly personal history with blogging.  So sit back, kids, because it’s about to get overly personal.

I started this blog back in 2004 after having just broken up (in a rather poor fashion) with a girl, dropped $2000 on a new computer, and changed my major from computer science back to film.  Like every blog in the world, it was poorly written, overly trite, and dealt way to much to school and television, but, whatever, it was a blog, who cared.  I didn’t.  Obviously.

A year later, I started a my first secret gay blog under an anonymous screen name that I ripped off of another gay Mormon whose blog was the first dealing with the subject that I had ever read.  I found his frankness at discussing his feelings incredibly refreshing and I started one to give me an outlet for my own thoughts.  It did and those thoughts terrified me.  After only a few weeks of posting almost every day, I deleted the blog.

Of course, it wasn’t to be the last.

I graduated, moved to Atlanta and started another secret gay Mormon blog.  Like the first, I poured my tortured little soul into it which, of course, meant that was almost unreadable by anyone other than other tortured gay Mormons.  They did read it and I read theirs, amazed that were others out there sharing the same struggles.  While it wasn’t always the best environment (angst usually begets angst) it was kind of nice to talk to people who knew pretty much exactly how I felt when it seemed like no one else around me did, try as they might.  Of course I maintained this blog with no clue as to the existence of the other one.

This new gay blog, though, also collapsed under the weight of its own self pity and was shut down to the world.

Time passed.  I was becoming more comfortable with myself and I decided that I wanted to start the process of coming out which, of course, involved starting a blog.

This one would be different than the gay Mormon blogs that I had started previously.  Firstly, it would be less angst-ridden.  Secondly, it wouldn’t be a gay Mormon blog at all, at least not in the traditional sense.  While I had enjoyed the virtual companionship of those who understood how I felt, I decided that I wanted to write for people who didn’t really understand how I felt – most straight Mormons.  It would be lighter, a bit snarky, and would help people to see things from a new perspective without pushing them too hard out of their comfort zone.  This blog would also serve as the platform for my coming out – finally merging two parts of my life that have be divided for a long time and in April 2008, the first post of  Soy Made Me Gay was published.  Unlike my other gay Mormon blogs, the readership of Soy grew steadily and included as many straights (and those who claimed heterosexuality) as it did gays.

Then Prop 8 happened.  As the campaign when on, my daily unique count climbed into the triple digits, which meant that Soy was more read than anything I had ever written, probably including a letter to the editor that I had published in Time magazine when I was eighteen.  I struggled to maintain a positive tone as the two groups that represented me best carried on a disturbing war of words that exploded across the Internet.  I became ashamed of both of them.

Still, I came out on the blog as planned, having come out to my family a few weeks earlier to ensure they didn’t find out from the Internet and having come out to my ward in testimony meeting the day before.

The email started ramping up.  At first they were simply messages from people saying that the liked the blog, thought it was funny, etc. – which I found very flattering and caused my ego let out a belt notch or two.  Then the emails started getting personal.  People started talking about the struggle they had with accepting family members who were gay and how my blog had helped them to come better to terms with it.  At the height of the campaign, I was receiving two or three emails a week from gay Mormons – some sounding young – asking for advice on dealing with their sexuality, advice on coming out, and giving praise for being a good example – especially after I outed myself.  Some of these conversations happened over email, some over IM, and even others were happening over the phone.

All of this was happening as I saw the words of other Mormons insisting that they had to protect traditional marriage from attack from the gays.  People like me.  The gays called the Mormons bigots.  People like me.  I was starting to hate them both and certainly didn’t feel like, nor want to be, an example to anyone.

After the election was over, the president was black, California marriage wasn’t between men anymore (or between women), but readership stayed up and the messages continued.  I was nominated for a couple of Niblets (Mormon blogging awards), and one of my posts was published in Sunstone with the editor requesting more submissions.  Behind the scenes, I was sick of the whole thing.  I wanted to move on, and so I shut Soy down.

And I tried to move on for a long time.  I started other blogs, which usually only lasted a post or two.  I tried to return to my main blog, but it didn’t work.  Every time I tried to write something, I couldn’t.  Somehow all the pressure and expectations and anger had shut down the part of me that connected my thoughts and emotions to my fingers.  And so, I stopped writing.

Time passed.

I went to church.  I dated.  I changed jobs.  I fell in love.  I was dumped.  I dated some more.

After my most recent breakup, however, I found the part of my brain that had bound up my expression was starting to loosen up a bit.  I’m still not sure why I’m not paralyzed at the thought of typing my thoughts on random items or writing a personal essay about other random events, but I’m not.  And so I’m going with it.

I make no promises, of course, because who knows if/when my brain will lock up in another overly-emotional fit or when I’m just going to get bored and decide that blogs really are so 2005.  I’m here for now, though, and since I’m currently living in the ‘burbs, you’re probably going to hear a lot from me.

It’s not like there’s anything else to do out here.

Okay, truth time, I haven’t seen The Book of Mormon musical: 1) because I live in Atlanta and 2) being a musical, it probably has long periods where people sing, so, eh.  But I have watched interviews with its creators and seen some of their previous treatments of Mormons and I’m pretty sure that the Book of Mormon musical and entertainment like it is going to do more good than harm for the Mormon image, if we’ll let it.

Hollywood Is From Mars, Mormons Are From Venus

Like many religions or ethnicities, Mormons can be a very insular group.  It’s not uncommon for your typical Mormon’s entire family to also be Mormon as well as most, if not all, of their friends.  I also fall into this category.  There isn’t a problem with this per se except that it does sometimes lead to hurt feelings as differing communication styles and values between groups tend to cloud the real intent behind certain message.

Communication Tip for Mormons #1: Different or weird isn’t necessarily derogatory.
“Remember when we used to be polygamists?  That was weird, amiright?”

Mormons are sometimes loath to point out the ways which we are different from everyone else.  Sure we may refer to ourselves as a “peculiar people”, but with other religions and groups we are much more likely to scream, “hey, we’re normal, look at how normal we are being!”  This, unfortunately, is not normal and makes us seem even more awkward.  Sure, it’s good to recognize common ground, but Hollywood actually values different, even “broken”, as long as that broken is self-aware.  A perception that many Hollywoodians have of Mormons is that we’re an ultra-suburbanized Southern Baptist Convention.  Not flinching from the oddity our more unconventional beliefs past and present instead of treating them with embarrassed shame would probably elevate us from “evangeligalish” to “weird” to “weirdly fascinating”.

Communication Tip for Mormons #2: Criticism isn’t a sin to non-Mormons
Mormons can be extremely reticent to criticize themselves as a group and the church as an organization. While it’s true that criticism at can be annoying all the way to damaging, many Mormons feel as though acknowledging inconsistencies is the first step on a definite path to burning the Book of Mormon while doing meth and staring in porn, because, you know, there’s no way one can be committed spiritually to a religion without 100% acceptance of all the doctrines *cough* jewsandcatholics *cough*.  People tend to be okay with flaws, even intrinsic ones, as the character Gary on The Book of Mormon musical’s creator’s show South Park points out as a Mormon character confronts the kids of the town who think his beliefs are ridiculous:

“Maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the Church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that’s stupid, I still choose to believe in it. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you’re so high and mighty you couldn’t look past my religion and just be my friend back. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. “

And yes, I did intentionally leave off the last sentence of Gary’s speech, which brings me to our next point:

Communication Tip for Mormons #3: Offensive isn’t always an attack
The Book of Mormon musical is probably guaranteed to be extremely offensive. Not just to Mormons, but to anyone who doesn’t like persistent vulgar language, strong sexual content and a lot of bodily function humor.  It doesn’t mean, however, that the show is simply mocking Mormon’s tendency towards clean speech…well, it is mocking that, but in a way that one makes fun of the really effeminate guy in one’s circle of friends.  Sure, you may laugh scornfully at his enthusiasm over women’s shoes, but, I doesn’t mean you don’t like the guy.  Sure, you may not like the coarse content, but the coarse content, itself, isn’t necessarily an indicator of derision.  To the contrary, in the case of The Book of Mormon musical, by all accounts, Mormons are ridiculed with a familiarity verging on endearment.

Take for example, the showing of the temple ceremony on Big Love.  I haven’t seen the episode, nor do I plan to, and while I likely would be personally offended by its content, I’m not offended by its existence, which as I understand was presented in a matter-of-fact way.  The show wanted to explore the dynamics of a culture which included all of that culture’s rituals – even literal rituals.  It wasn’t necessarily a judgement, it just was, and while I don’t value its portrayal, I don’t think the producers hate Mormons.  Most of them, anyway.

By insisting recognition on the global (or the very least, national) religious stage, we present our entire selves, not just the facets of our collective personality that we want everyone to focus on.   This will require some discipline and self-confidence as we can’t control what people say about us.  We can, however, control our reaction to what they say and not easily take offense, whether it is intended or not.  After all, at least they’re talking.

Okay, now this last one will be the topic of our conversation today simply because it was in the Flirting section of someecards. (In full disclosure, this isn’t the real card that prompted this post, but this blog has my name in the URL, so I chickened out posting that one.) Now, it should be readily apparent that the site’s humor is over-the-top, but it got me thinking about flirting and how bad I am at it.

Actually, I’m pretty good at it, apparently, but with the wrong people. I’ve been told that I can be quite flirty with cashiers and waiters, but when the object of my interaction isn’t a business transaction, I become something akin to a DMV employee.

Potential Conversation:

Him: I’m pretty new to Atlanta, what’s fun to do here?

At this point, I’m wondering why this person is even talking to me; I feign aloofness. This almost always will be taken too far, giving me a completely disinterested presence.

Me: I don’t know. The aquarium is pretty cool, but it’s expensive.

Wow, great suggestion, it’s something anyone Googling the Atlanta Tourism Board could have come up with. Our subject, however, is not easily dissuaded.

Him: That’s cool, I’ve never been to an aquarium. Hey, are there cool music venues here?

Weird question, I’ll think (for some reason), and this thought will bleed into my tone.

Me: Um, what kind of music do you like?

This question is to help match him to an applicable music scene, but will come across as, “you like Ke$ha, don’t you?”

Him: Umm…

He’s thinking this isn’t going well, and it isn’t.

Him: Mostly indie-type stuff, I guess. Sigur Rós, Death Cab, Bloc Party, Metric, The Weepies…

At this point, I’m swooning, but never dreaming he’d be interested in return, I reign it in.

Me: Yeah, those are cool.

Him: I love going to concerts, but I don’t really know anyone here yet…

Aha! But not the right “aha”. Clearly he is gauging interest in spending more time together, but since I am completely oblivious, I see a need and out of a desire to be useful suggest:

Me: You know, you should talk to Jessica, she loves going to concerts, too, and would probably be interested.

And thus, we witness a fail.

I’d like to believe that my ineptitude in flirting comes merely by the low number of flirting possibilities in my associations, the reality is that even if my social circles included more flirting prospects, I’d continue being completely dense to other people’s intentions. So, to prevent confusion, I request the world start communicating by handing out small cards such as this: