Religious Molds

I know a lot of my Facebook posts may have come off anti-religion lately. To be honest, that's not too far from the truth.

You see, religion works for a lot of people. But it also seems to let people like me fall by the wayside, and can incur a lot of damage on those people in the process. I don't fit into the mold. I don't think anyone really fits into the mold, forcing a lot of sacrifices and trimming in order to match.

I think that there are certain things that religion teaches fairly well. The golden rule seems to be present in nearly every religion. Religions can sometimes encourage healthier living, such as the LDS Word of Wisdom, which prohibits tobacco and alcohol use.

But I worry. I worry that like me, many who were raised religious find themselves silenced. Trying to fix something with religion that needs to be addressed with reality. For example, the big family rally held by the Osmonds in Utah recently... done with good intentions, I'm sure. But what of all the LGBT youth who were present that are just beginning to learn who they are? They were bombarded with this sentiment: opposite-sex marriage is the only way to happiness. They were told that they are broken, and the only way to be whole is for them to deny themselves their whole lives.

I was told I had to be a boy, I had to serve a mission, I had to get married in the temple and have a family. That was the way to happiness. The first one never sat well with me, a subject for another discussion. But the mission was even worse. How could I teach this religion to others when I knew how much it had hurt me? I couldn't reconcile it. When, years later, I was in love with a wonderful woman who I wanted to spend my life with, I only had the go-to answer which had been hammered into my head: I'm going to have to marry her in the temple. That was the only route to long term happiness I had been taught. But I found myself being pounded into this mold that fit me worse and worse as time went on. The mold seemed to change over time, becoming tighter.

When the LDS church came out in support of Prop 8 and told the members that their salvation depended on their support of the measure, I felt those weapons of war aimed right at me. I Was In A Same-Sex Marriage. Perhaps my wife didn't realize it, and certainly I had done a good job of trying to forget it as much as possible, but the knowledge that I was a woman was always there under the surface. This sudden attack against LGBT people was intensely personal. I could no longer support the church in any way, it was waging war on my lifestyle.

Now that my wife and I are no longer together, she takes our two boys to church most Sundays, and I support her in this only because I somehow managed to survive it and ended up a pretty good person. But I wonder. What if one of my boys doesn't fit the mold well enough. Even if they do fit, will anything be trimmed or sacrificed that was good or wonderful? I don't have a solution yet. =(