Mormons Were So Queer

Mitt Romney’s ability to have any air time in the presidential arena baffles me. I only arrived in Boston at the tail end of his governorship, but it was clear that almost everybody in Massachusetts considered him a failure. Now he is running a campaign based on the premise that he hated the majority of the people in the state that he governed.

All that aside, his religious choice to be Mormon has drawn a great deal of attention. Where there are Mormons, there are going to be nagging questions about polygamy.

Personally, I think it really was a miracle that Brigham Young convinced one woman to marry him, much less 52. Have you seen pictures of Young? He wasn’t exactly a prize catch. Only divine intervention saved his sorry ass from being alone in the desert.



Regardless, the LDS Church officially ended polygamy within their church in 1890. In that year, a “miraculous vision” to church leaders conveniently coincided with the Federal government’s threats to seize Mormon properties. God sure had impeccable timing as it also lowered the last hurdle for Utah to become a state in 1896. Yes, even though it was filled with religious extremists who practiced polygamy and wore funny underwear, the U.S. still preferred making it a state over New Mexico. That territory, in the U.S. since 1848, wouldn’t be granted statehood until 1912 because of its Mexican-majority population. Of course, 1912 would also be the same year that Romney’s ancestors would return to the U.S. after fleeing to Mexico to keep up their polygamous ways (Something, btw, that didn’t thrill Mexico).

Romney’s own family tree has a number of, shall we say, deviated branches. One of his great-great grandfathers had twelve wives. His great-grandfather had five wives. They all believed that polygamy was not only right, but actually ordered by God.

One might imagine that such a family history would make Romney a bit more sensitive to contemporary people who wish to change the idea of marriage. On the contrary, Romney sees nothing inconsistent in his own family history and his support of “traditional marriage.” Indeed, he is so comfortable that he even jokes about it, saying “I believe marriage should be between a man and a woman … and a woman … and a woman" (a quip he made on the now infamous Don Imus radio show).

For a religion that really hates the modern gays, Mormons have a rather queer past. I don’t mean queer in the man-on-man sex way (which the nineteenth-century Mormon church clearly didn’t support either). Rather, queer meaning that their sexual practices were defined and denigrated against what was imagined as “normal” (marriage as one woman and one man). In many ways, modern Mormons are still considered queer based on myths and legends about their sexual decisions.

Despite Romney’s attempts to laugh it off, the media is obsessed with polygamy and the Mormon church. Even though the official LDS Church hasn’t condoned polygamy (or “plural marriage”) in over a century, Romney is still fielding questions about it. Seemingly people are expecting that he has a couple extra wives secretly stashed away somewhere or that the whole LDS church is going to announce “gottcha” at any moment on an unsuspecting monogamous public.

Indeed, the U.S. has such a love/hate voyeuristic relationship with Mormon polygamy that HBO has an entire show devoted to the premise. Big Love features a rebel Mormon family that broke off from the LDS to create a polygamous family. Think of it as the modern Brady Bunch. Well, except that Mike’s first wife didn’t die and, instead, became friends with Carol. And Alice serves more than applesauce and pork chops to Mr. Brady.



Do we, though, really still care about polygamy as an issue? Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of problems with the historical ways that the Mormon church construed polygamy. It was based on a sexist premise that kept women in subordinate positions. I am also certainly horrified by the creepy modern version practiced by “Mormon fundamentalists” that seemingly involves a lot of brainwashing and bartering of children

As just an issue by itself, though, does polygamy still matter? What taboo is at stake anymore? Is it really a major issue for us, as a society, if three or more adults negotiate a mutual relationship (as long as all the parties are honest about it)?

The truth is that many people (of all forms of sexuality) are already organizing their lives in this way. The legal system doesn’t recognize it, but that doesn’t mean it is not their reality. Beyond the most extreme of Christians, few people seem concerned about an individual having multiple sex/romantic partners throughout their lifetime. What is the big deal about having two (or more) at the same time if everybody involved is down with that? If we are really interested in sexual freedom, shouldn’t all adults be able to create the types of relationships that they want? Beyond making inheritance easier, what is the investment in upholding an exclusive notion of marriage?

That aside, I think that radical Christians are spooked by Mormon polygamy because it exposes the arbitrariness of some of their own religious beliefs. Mormons, after all, claimed to be following God’s orders as they pursued their kinky, kinky relationships just as radical Christians claim to be following God's orders to pursue their own sad, unhappy monogamous marriages.

If radical Christians are really interested in defending one-man-one-woman traditional marriage, I say that polygamy might be the key for them. It sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out.

Let’s be honest, hetero people aren’t having great luck keeping their marriages together. Divorce rates are sky-high these days. With polygamy, it could increase their odds that at least one of those unions would stick. It would be like the lotto – You could have a “Quick Pick Five.” By the end of the first decade, I guarantee that only one of those spouses is going to still tolerate you. Eventually it would be whittled down to the one-man-one-woman ratio that Christians believe is critical to civilization as we know it.

Lawyers are the other group that should really support polygamy. If divorce is making them rich now, just imagine how wealthy they would be if polygamy became the rule of law. Each lawyer could build their entire career just following around one polygamist family.

For myself, though, I have no plans to become the gay version of Brigham Young. I am not even sure I could manage 52 friends at the same time, much less finding time for all those spouses. Not to mention all the little annoying things that you have to put up with when you have just one spouse. I can’t imagine coming home and finding that a dozen of my spouses had left their dirty underwear sitting on the floor.

Wages of Straightness

Comments from Harry Jackson (which I first saw mentioned by JMG) caught my attention the other day. Jackson, a diva religious zealot, is looking to build his reputation as an African-American leader by disparaging gays and lesbians. So far, he has received a great deal of attention due to his outspoken opposition to hate-crimes legislation currently pending in Congress.

It is already a federal crime to violently assault an individual based on race, religion, color or national origin (all of these laws require, though, that the victim be engaged in a federally monitored activity when the attack occurred (such as voting or pursuing interstate commerce)). The new measure, which passed in the House of Representatives, expands those existing federal laws by adding sexual orientation and gender. Jackson opposes the measure because he believes that it will threaten radical Christians’ ability to harass gays (which it doesn’t – the measure is about violence, not speech).

Jackson has been explicit about his disdain for gays and lesbians. In particular, he feels gays and lesbians should not be welcomed in African-American churches. Using the old double-speak of “loving the sinner, hating the sin,” Jackson stops just short of calling for a witch-hunt within black churches. He argues that African-American churches have traditionally followed a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” about gay and lesbian Christians. “In my view,” Jackson writes, “the ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ approach to this problem is the height of hypocrisy . . . The Church, on the other hand, should be a place of conviction and truth. The Bible is clear in its statements against gay sexual activity.” Like so many religious zealots, Jackson imagines that the nation needs to regress to the times of the Old Testament. If people would go Biblical with their sex lives, he promises “there would be fewer out-of-wedlock births as well as fewer practicing gays in the black church.” Hey, what doesn't say "Christian love" like driving people out of the Church?

If Jackson is really concerned about decreasing the number of out-of-wedlock births, shouldn't he be encouraging more homo sex? Homo sex is the best and most reliable form of birth control (aside from masturbation).

From my vantage point, if there were fewer practicing gays in the black church, then they would have more time to practice being gay. Let’s be honest, you are never going to learn how to give a great blow job sitting in church.

Too much? Hey, Center of Gravitas isn’t a blog for kids. Go somewhere else for coloring books and lollipops.

While I think Jackson a bit looney, I really don’t care that he preaches such dribble. If that is his religious belief, so be it. Perhaps he and Jerry Falwell can swap stories when Jackson’s time for hell arrives.

What does bother me, though, is the way that Jackson and similar conservative minority figures help undermine civil rights in this nation even as they claim to be the inheritors of the movement. News media love the idea of presenting civil rights as if it is a limited commodity. They know it makes a compelling story if one oppressed group wrestles with another. In the meantime, the injustice that both groups suffer is sidelined. Giving disproportionate attention to somebody like Jackson also perpetuates the notion that gays and African Americans don’t have common goals or work cooperatively (either historically or in the present). Gays are presented as defacto “white” and African Americans as defacto “straight.”

Jackson likes to point out that Black churches historically served as places where African Americans organized and fought for civil rights. Truthfully, religious imagery was often critically important to many (but not all (more in a moment)) of the campaigns in the twentieth century. Of course, Jackson has decided to ignore Coretta Scott King or the recently deceased Yolanda King, who both advocated for gay rights as part of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy.

Likewise, Jackson conveniently ignores that religious imagery was also critically important to the opponents of desegregation as well. Southern whites used their own churches and vision of “Biblical” morality to justify the inhuman treatment of their fellow citizens based on race.

Indeed, even some conservative African-American religious leaders used their positions to advocate against Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil-rights leaders at mid-century. According to some sources, for instance, Rev. John Wesley Rice, Jr. (father of the current Secretary of State) either ignored or, much worse, disdained the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties. Rice, according to one Birmingham resident, called preacher and civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth and his congregation "uneducated, misguided Negroes.” This explains a lot about ol' Condi.

Religion can be tricky like that. Both sides on the civil rights moment believed they were right – both claimed moral authority – and both found their answers in the same sacred texts. Why, one could almost question their validity in deciding civil matters.

Some, however, did not find religion important to their sense of social justice at all. Jackson would probably be loathe to acknowledge the role of African Americans who were gay and/or not religious. Perhaps the most prominent example is Bayard Rustin, a gay African American leader. For all of his adult life, Rustin worked tirelessly as a civil-rights advocate for African Americans as well as queer folk. During his early life, Rustin was a committed socialist. He participated in the first “freedom rides” that challenged segregation on transregional buses. For his trouble, North Carolina rewarded Rustin with thirty days on a chain gang.



In 1963, Rustin was the principle organizer of the famous March on Washington where King gave his “I Have a Dream Speech.” Neither the alleged handicaps of being non-religious or non-straight kept Rustin from making a difference for this nation's pursuit of social equality. I am also going to go out on a limb and suggest that all that practicing Rustin did at being a homo didn’t radically impair the African-American community. And, let me tell you, he practiced a lot.

Near the end of his life in 1987, Rustin stated, “"The barometer of where one is on human rights questions is no longer the black community, it's the gay community. Because it is the community which is most easily mistreated." While I might not fully agree with that assessment (race still seems a darn easy way for people to be denied their rights in this and other nations), one could hardly refute Rustin’s credentials in making it.



We should interrogate claims that those who are religious have the exclusive ability to decide moral issues. This should especially be the case when such religious claims are accompanied by attempts to curtail the rights of entire groups of people.

Perhaps Jackson could learn something from another major African-American figure in U.S. history: W. E. B. DuBois. At the turn of the twentieth century, DuBois became one of the most well-known African-American intellectuals in the nation. In particular, he often wrote about social injustice in this nation's history.



DuBois wisely recognized that poor whites faced harsh conditions in the U.S. and had many legitimate grievances with the status quo. Yet, he argued, poor whites did not revolt because they received a “public and psychological” wage of imagined racial superiority. In other words, DuBois suggested that poor whites were given the illusion of better social standing against an oppressed African-American population rather than improved economic conditions. When monetary wages fell short, they could at least claim to have the nonmonterary compensation of social superiority over African Americans. Modern-day historian David Roedirger would use this idea to discuss the “wages of whiteness.”

In much the same way, conservatives like Jackson offer the “wages of straightness.” Rather than addressing unfair racial, economic, and social structures in the U.S. that affect the African-American community, Jackson suggests that real satisfaction can be taken in not being one of those sinful homos. As long as gays are disempowered, he reasons, African-American heteros are empowered.

We saw this same notion used triumphantly in the 2004 election. Bushie and crew (especially Karl Rove) understood the wages of straightness. Pollsters and social scientists scratched their heads at why so many poor whites and a few Latinos and African Americans voted Republican when the party was clearly against their personal economic interests. One of the answers centered on “gay marriage.” By placing anti-gay measures on the ballot, conservatives promised heteros a nonmonetary wage instead of actual economic security. Claiming that their relationships/marriages were “special” and needed “protection” gave those who voted against gays a sense of purpose (if not also a sense of moral and religious duty). Much like the wages of whiteness, however, it did little to improve their actual daily lives (With Haliburton, tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring gas prices, and a decrease in social services all thanks to the Bush administration, it probably made most straight people’s daily lives worse. Thank God, though, that Tim and Frank can’t be legally acknowledged as a couple!).

Figures like Jackson remind us why coalition building and a unified sense of social justice is critical to continuing the fight for civil and human rights. Though imperfect, many of the legendary social movements of the 1960s and 1970s had a language of solidarity across race, gender, and sexuality (even if they fell short in practice). The Black Panthers, for instance, aligned with the Gay Liberation Front out of a sense of shared commitment to social justice.

Today, though, I would suggest that Jackson has not faced significant challenge from the GLBT community because the existing queer organizations in this country no longer consider issues of race or racism as a core part of their agenda. Groups like HRC and others operate with a distinctly white, middle-class agenda and have proved unable to engage or understand the needs of queers of color (much less the larger hetero communities). When asked to explain why African Americans should support the hate-crime protection legislation for queer folk, HRC comes up blank.

Understanding and fighting all forms of social injustice must become part of our daily lives if we want to counter conservative ideologies. The reality is that the queer community includes people across racial and class lines. Supporting and defending the African American community is supporting and defending the queer community and vice versa.

Immoral Minority

Jerry Falwell is dead. One can’t turn on a television or a computer without seeing his rotund face. I personally take no satisfaction in his death, though I can understand why many queer people might do so. My personal (though largely undeveloped) belief in karma makes me inclined not to wish harm on anybody. Of course, I also suspect that at about this time Falwell is awakening to find that God is really a Latina Lesbian and that she’s kinda pissed with him.

Falwell’s death, I am sure, is hard for his three children and the friends who will miss him. I can’t fathom that anybody thought that he had more sex appeal than Jabba the Hut, but he apparently also had a wife. They all cared for him and they are probably mourning now.

That was the problem with Falwell, though. While I recognize that he had value to those who surrounded him, he never recognized the same in me as a gay man. I (and other people like me) existed as merely an abstraction to him. Apparently it did not occur to him that I also had a life, people who cared for and loved me, and my own ambition in life. Instead of that, he saw all queer people as an indistinguishable group that was responsible for bringing God’s punishment to this nation on September 11 (along with feminists, anybody who had an abortion, and “Pagans”).

Though I wished him no harm, I also don't want it to be forgotten that Falwell created a tremendous amount of pain and misery for queer people in this nation. His rise in power came from tapping into people's worst homophobia. Because of his status, many people listened intently to his rambling. His religious message likely resulted in some casting out their own sons, daughters, or other loved ones.



Jerry Falwell and his cronies provided a critical lesson in why we need to be vigilant in guarding our civil rights. Not only did he prevent our attaining basic civil protections, he and his friends actually worked to rollback already established laws.

During the middle of the 1970s, many communities started to listen to gay activists' concerns for their safety and security. Indeed, by 1977 more than three dozen states or local governments had added sexual orientation to civil rights statutes that protected citizens against discrimination. Many people expressed optimism that queer people might actually be treated like humans in the United States. The Religious Right, however, would put an end to all of that.

Unexpectedly, Dade County, Florida became a battleground. Why do so many bad things happen in that county? Is it cursed? Was the whole county built on a cemetery? Did they only move the tombstones and not the bodies?

In 1977, Dade County passed an ordinance making it illegal to discriminate against an individual based on their sexual orientation. Suddenly a woman appeared on the national scene who would make Darth Vader seem like my Aunt Molly. Anita Bryant created a massive campaign to take away civil rights that had already been protected by law. While many people credit Falwell with launching an era of extremist-religious driven political organizing, it was really Bryant who taught him some critically important tricks.

Bryant, who had been a beauty contestant (for the scholarship money, I am sure) and also the pitchwoman for Florida Orange Juice, proved immensely shrewd at manipulating the media. Bryant told eager reporters, "I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before." Man, she wasn’t foolin’.

The Dade County ordinance seemed innocuous enough. More or less, it said that treating queer people unfairly was bad and would be illegal. Stop the bus, cried Bryant. She authoritatively stated that the civil rights measure was just an elaborate trick to launch a more sinister agenda. Bryant claimed that “hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that there is an acceptable alternate way of life.” Yes, Bryant suggested that evil gay folk had the audacity to say that it might be okay to not live your life like your parents lived theirs. Wouldn’t somebody think of the children?

Well, Bryant thought of the children – She thought they made a great centerpiece for her campaign as she organized a massive grassroots organization. Bryant knew the importance of the soundbite and quickly steered the debate away from civil rights. Instead, she created a distinction between people whom she personally saw as “normal” and her opponents, whom she dubbed “those people.” According to Bryant, the very fabric of society hinged on being sure that queer people could be fired from their jobs or deprived of housing (She would later ensure that queer people in Florida would not be able to adopt children).



Bryant milked homophobic stereotypes for every drop of attention she could squeeze out. Incendiary statements became her forte, especially as she exploited (unsubstantiated) claims about child abuse. The former Miss Oklahoma argued that queer people, allegedly cursed by not being able to have their own children, wanted everybody else’s. Once safely in our clutches, we would make short work of turning those children gay (I am guessing through a daily regiment of disco music, decorating courses, and fern gardening). The general public ate it up. When Bryant said things like “Some of the stories I could tell you of child recruitment and child abuse by homosexuals would turn your stomach,” nobody ever asked her to prove it.

She ultimately named her campaign “Save Our Children.” I guess calling her organization, “Treat Queer People Like Garbage” didn’t test well (though she did often refer to us as “human garbage.” Wasn’t she a delight?).

In the midst of all that circus, who should appear on the scene but Jerry Falwell? Already a well-know Baptist preacher, Falwell flew to Florida to add religious authority to Bryant’s histrionics. The press dutifully quoted everything that Falwell said about queer men and women. “So called gay folks,” Falwell warned, would “just as soon kill you as look at you.”

Isn’t that the truth? All that anal sex just drives us to kill, kill, KILL!

More importantly, though, Falwell took a look at Bryant’s success at building a massive grassroots political organization (not to mention raising a handsome amount of cash) based on the hatred of others. He figured he could do likewise. In 1979, he founded the Moral Majority (which was neither). Using his Old Time Gospel Hour television show, Falwell eventually enlisted seventy-two thousand ministers and four million lay members. He claimed that he and his loyal followers battled “secular humanists and amoralists [who] are running this country and taking it straight to hell.”



Who were these people who fastracked the nation to sulfur and brimstone? Falwell frequently named the true culprits as gays, feminists, and (sometimes) Jews. He said that he was fighting a “holy war” and never shied away from talking about his hatred of people like me. In 1981, he also learned that he could literally raise a quick million dollars by asking his followers “Do you approve of known practicing homosexuals teaching in public schools?” Practicing homosexuals? Silly, Jerry – If we don’t practice, how will we ever be any good at it?

Some twenty years later, Falwell continued to make the same types of statements and usually found success. “If we do not act now,” Falwell told his frantic audiences in the late nineties, “homosexuals will 'own' America!” Yeah, gays owning America would have been a real travesty given the great shape that heterosexual people have left it. We would have gotten away with it, too, if he hadn’t uncovered our secret operative, Tinky-Winky.

Of course, I don’t at all begrudge Falwell his religious beliefs. If he wanted to imagine me burning in hell for all eternity, so be it. My vision for his afterlife might be comparable. What I did mind terribly, though, was that he confused his personal religious beliefs with civil government. I also really, really, really minded that the mainstream media often gave him a free pass and rarely bothered finding counter voices to his message.

It is interesting to me that Falwell and his kindred spirits like to claim that being queer is a matter of “choice.” From my perspective, it is they who have a choice. They are actively choosing to believe in a hateful form of their religion. Clearly Falwell made conscious decisions about which elements from Christian texts that he wanted to believe and the others that he disregarded. Given his appearance, for instance, I am guessing that the sin of gluttony hit the cutting room floor.

To me, Falwell represented the worst elements of this nation. He used religion to tell people that it was okay to hate. In doing so, he made a fortune.

They Don't Know Me

Christian fanatics have a lot of time and money on their hands. Maybe all that self-denial and repression frees up your schedule. Every time I turn around some hateful Christian is running off to court to try and eliminate other people’s rights (Yet, they are also the first ones to claim that they hate “activist judges” and courts that decide social issues).

Where do they find the time? I don’t have a spare moment to contest a parking ticket. Yet these folk spend all day long in court. Don't they have jobs? Who is taking care of that gaggle of kids they keep churning out irresponsibly?

Most recently, a federal judged dismissed a case brought by the mean-spirited David and Tonia Parker and Joseph and Robin Wirthlin. These “parents” sued a Lexington, Massachusetts school because the teacher had the nerve to tell second-grade students that (*gasp*) gay people exist in the world and (horrors!) they have the right to marry in this state. These Christian parents argued that the school infringed on their right to force their children to be hateful monsters. The core of their argument suggests that their children have no rights and must unthinkingly adopt a religious doctrine like their parents. From this Christian perspective, children are their property and should not be allowed exposure to any other viewpoints – or the reality of human diversity.

In particular, the parents got all tied-up over the children’s story King and King. In this fairy-tale, a young prince, under orders to marry, interviews a number of princesses. Ultimately, though, he finds that the person that he loves is another prince.

Well, there was the problem right there. Love? We know how much Christian fanatics hate love. Nothing makes them more angry. Marriage isn't supposed to be about love. Marriage should be as God intended it: unhappy, filled with remorse, and about one person owning another.

It did get me to thinking. Fanatical Christians like the Parkers and Wirthlins must have very little idea about what my personal life is like as a gay man. Gay men and lesbians are just abstractions that they use to avoid thinking about how empty and wasted their own lives are.

They must conjure a very peculiar view of what daily life is like for us queer folk. Here is what I imagine they think that gay men do with our days:

9:00-10:00 am: Wake up, Urinate on New Testament

10:00-10:45 am: Seduce unsuspecting heterosexual Christian preachers. That’s what keeps us gay men looking so youthful.

10:45-11:15 am: Burn down a children’s hospital.

11:15-11:45 am: Undermine a heterosexual marriage. Our goal is to end civilization as we know it, but we can only do that by undermining one hetero marriage at a time. Eyes on the prize.

11:45 am-12:45pm: Lunch, consisting of Cottage Cheese and pineapple.

12:45-1:15 pm: Dress as Cher

1:15 – 1:30 pm: Infiltrate public schools – Arrange a curriculum that contains almost no information about heterosexuality. Teach children that the only authentic expression of love occurs while wearing a leather mask.



1:30 – 2:00 pm: Orgy with a Roman theme – Precipitate the collapse of the U.S. Empire

2:00-2:30 pm: Take a person-to-person call from Satan.

2:30- 3:30 pm: Compete in the regional softball tournament that pits gay men against lesbians.

3:30 – 4:00 pm: Go to a local church and replace the holy water with sulfuric acid.

4:00 - 4:30 pm: Write and produce all of the news and entertainment currently available in the United States – ‘cuz we are so well represented in the mainstream media.

4:30 – 5:00 pm: Show up in Tim Hardaway’s locker room and just, you know, linger.

5:00 – 5:30 pm: Canvass the neighborhood passing out informational literature in efforts to recruit people to be gay. Borrow strategies from both Christian missionaries and Avon. Have you heard the word? The good word of man-on-man sweaty action? Now in shimmering Sunset Rose!

5:30 – 6:00 pm: Break into heterosexuals’ houses in order to redecorate them.

6:00-6:45pm: Sensible dinner.

6:45 – 7:15 pm: Go to a local bar and just arm wrestle for half an hour.



7:15 – 7:30 pm: Style somebody's hair.

7:30 – 8:15 pm: Sing karaoke.

8:15 – 9:30 pm: Organize and star in a Broadway Musical

9:30 – 10:45 pm: Sex with random strangers. I mean, come on, we don’t bother to look at the guy’s face.

10:45 –12:00 am: Hide under Christians’ beds until they fall asleep.

This must be what the bizarre Christian folk think of my days. That is just so unfair. Really, I can only accomplish 30 or 40 percent of this on any given day. Plus, have you seen the price of sulfuric acid these days? And those Roman orgies don’t just spontaneously happen. There’s a lot of planning that goes into one of those. A Roman orgy isn't a daily event with that level of work. You need to block out a whole weekend for that. Renting that donkey can be a hassle.

Of course, the big thing that separates fanatical Christians from me is that I mostly don’t care about this list. Even the things that the Christians fear most seem like pretty small potatoes. Well, except maybe the hospital thing. Probably burning them with acid would be extreme too – probably.