Pain and Allies

I had the chance this weekend to attend a presentation on Supporting LGBTQ Latter-day Saints put on by a well known author/podcaster (or at least well-known by the LGBTQ+ crowd in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). While the presentation was good, I want to share a few thoughts I had from the dinner I attended with him beforehand. 

At dinner, he made a comment that he has a friend who is a doctor who made this observation:

"Pain is a friend to us as doctors. It tells us there's a problem that needs to be addressed." 

This was followed by the comment that the same should be true of church. If someone is having painful experiences at church, it tells us there are things we need to address. 

So let me ask you a rhetorical question. When you see someone struggling with their church experiences, are you asking yourself "what can be done to improve their experience?" or more personally "What can I do?" I think a lot of people at church tend to tell themselves one of these lines (to name a few): 

• people's experiences are their responsibility and not mine
• it's their job not to take offense
• they need to fix their attitude
• they need to repent
• if they just endure they'll be blessed
• it is what it is
• they just need more faith
• I am not my brother's keeper

I'm not saying those statements are necessarily categorically false. Perhaps they are true, at least some of the time. But if that is our primary attitude, I think we are unrighteously relieving ourselves of our duties to mourn with those that mourn, and to stand with those in need of comfort. 

I heard a snippet of a podcast today where a pastor was explaining that his ministry had come to feel they needed to change how they talked about their inclusion of LGBTQ+ members. His comment was that his ministry had become

"reticent of using words like full inclusion or affirming because they feel a little self-congratulatory. We finally settled on the word repentant. Our sense was that we had not done something wonderful. We had stopped doing something awful and you shouldn't get a Nobel prize for the release of slaves or stopping abusing your spouse. It wasn't an act of generosity on our part, it was an act of repentance. We didn't invite queer people to the sacrament, we finally joined them there."

Does that hit a little hard to you? Inclusion was something they should have been doing all along, not something to be pointed out so it can be lauded for bonus points. Inclusion was an act of necessary repentance. They realized action is expected and not just better than inaction. This leads me to something else he said that evening. I wish he mentioned it in his presentation.

"As an ally you take any arrows you can for queer people." 

 I've never really liked the word ally, and I'll tell you why. It means a lot of things. And I find that a lot of people only take the most shallow sense of the word to heart. At least in action, I find that it most often means "I'm not a jerk to gay people." or "I don't judge gay people." or maybe "I agree with you politically." None of those things actually say to me "I can trust that person to be there for me." Silence and inaction don't make you a hero just because you're not out actively sinning by being a jerk. Just like the phrases "full inclusion" and "affirming" from above, I tend to find the word "ally" a little self-congratulatory. Congratulations you're not a jerk. Should I give you a medal? Sorry if that hurts your feelings. But I think it's worth noting. You can be a nice person, and still not be an ally.

I had an experience last year where someone approached me to say that I totally had their support, but not publicly. And I think to myself, I bet she thinks she's an ally. I bet she pats herself on the back and says "I did good." Can I request that the word "ally" be taken one step further like he did above? If you are not willing to "take any arrows," if you are not willing to take actual action to try to improve the experiences of people who are on the receiving end of those arrows, then you are not an ally. I interacted with people in our church last year who I'm sure would call themselves "allies" and yet allowed themselves to be weaponized against me, protecting the anonymity even of the person throwing those arrows. There was no attempt to catch those arrows or shield me from them. Only a concern for "justice" which in the end proved unnecessary. If there had been a little more concern for me, then they would have delved a little deeper before acting and would have caught some of those arrows instead of handing them to me or driving them in. Instead, sentences that included "I'm here to support you." would be followed by sentiments like "well you have to admit it's your fault for being openly gay" or "you should have known this would happen."

The same people who, if I told them I was offended by some bigoted and/or homophobic comment someone had made at church, would respond "just choose not to take offense." Those were the same people coming to me and telling me I needed to "filter more" to avoid making people uncomfortable. Where was the attitude that they have a responsibility to "not take offense" then? If you're going to have that attitude, it ought to go both ways so you don't become a hypocrite.  There's a longer conversation that could take place on that subject, but I won't delve into it now. Suffice it to say, that I think it would be more accurate to say "don't hold onto offense" instead of "don't take offense." But that's not really the point at the moment.

I've never found church policy all that painful. What I find painful is people. People who talk about you instead of to your face, people who never admit they were wrong. People who don't prioritize showing people consideration and/or respect. People who never apologize. People who will do the easy thing any day like say "I support you" but won't do the hard thing and actually show up how people need them to. People who insist they are "loving you" by doing X despite the fact that you have repeatedly communicated that they need to do Y for you to feel loved. People who don't listen to understand. People who think their silence and inaction relieves them of any responsibility for the things they are allowing to be said and done around them.

That presentation, and speaker made me more sad than anything else (not his fault).. Because he made it sound so easy and so simple. His demeanor absolutely exuded love and acceptance and it was beautiful and healing. And yet I felt an overwhelming sense of "nothing is going to change, people won't change, people don't care and I don't know when or if I'll ever feel at church, the way he makes me feel." And no one presentation will ever be enough to help the people who need it, change.. Too many will miss the point when it counts. Of course the shiny silver lining perspective here is that every drop in the ocean counts.

I'm reminded of a leadership training I also attended this weekend, where one of the teachers was discussing the notions of "line of authority" and "line of communication" and without those, messages from above don't always reach the right people, and even if they do, people just think "not my responsibility" and it doesn't get done. I know announcements regarding this event were sent to all the stakes in our area and yet we only had maybe 50 people in attendance. Majority of those people were probably those with some connection to a queer loved one (or queer themselves). I wonder if most who saw the invitation just thought "well that's not my responsibility" or "well I'm already an ally (not a jerk), I don't need to attend that", and of course "Super Bowl is more important." I'm not saying people should have to attend every fireside. I know we all get pulled a dozen different directions and feel pulled too thin and time for ourselves is also important. There's also the simple fact that because there was no line of communication in place for this event, lots of people simply missed the memo. But I wonder how many stopped to consider the message those 50 people received last night when they looked around at the attendance, and realized that helping LGBTQ+ people feel supported was not a priority to very many people. I suppose I hope most there were just grateful for those who did come. And I am, grateful.

I'm sorry this blog wasn't the most warm and fuzzy of my blogs. But it's what was on my heart today.