Thoughts Provoked by a Gay-Mormon Play

This essay will hopefully finish off my latest spate of posting (mostly on Facebook) about the gay issue. This issue pushes so many buttons for me that I tend to get sucked into too much writing about it, when I have lots of other things I need to be doing. I'm sure something will trigger me to write about it again in the near future, but I'd like to take a few months off.

I spent a recent weekend seeing a one-man play called Becoming Norman at a little nonprofit theater in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles. This intimate, honest, heartfelt, engaging play is the dramatized memoir of a guy who grew up Mormon in Orem, Utah, served a mission and attended BYU, but ultimately chose to leave Mormonism and pursue a gay lifestyle and gay romantic/sexual relationships. It was written and performed by my wife's cousin and good friend Norman Dixon, who I too enjoy and value as a person.

Letter to President Packer

Here is my letter in response to the following invitation: "Please support President Packer in standing for truth and righteousness, sounding a clear and much-needed warning voice, and exercising his constitutionally protected freedoms despite intense intimidation. You can send an email to the Church’s Public Affairs office at owentl@ldschurch.org (we are told your email will be forwarded to Pres. Packer) or send a note or postcard to President Boyd K. Packer, 50 East North Temple, Salt Lake City, UT, 84150."

Dear President Packer:

I felt so relieved to hear your talk on homosexuality and gay marriage (although I don't think you even mentioned those two terms). I'm online a lot, and I get so frustrated by the high level of confusion and worldliness AMONG LATTER-DAY SAINTS on this issue. I've even sometimes wondered if the LDS Church was starting to soften and go politically correct, such as when Church PR announced support for Salt Lake City's gay anti-discrimination ordinance or when Elder Marlin K. Jensen seemed to apologize for the Church's involvement in Prop 8 recently in California, or at least made it sound as if we're not already bending over backwards to be as compassionate as we can without changing our doctrine and surrending our standards.