Alone and Unobserved

One thing I didn’t mention in my recent coming-out post is that I already told my parents that I was attracted to men a few years back (a story in its own right). Why, then, you ask, do I still feel the need to come out to them? This is because, according to the guidelines of the Mormon Church, there is no such thing as homosexuality (as that would contradict some of Mormonism’s basic assumptions about reality); there are instead two separate situations: “same-sex attraction,” and “living the gay lifestyle.” I cannot emphasize enough that to Mormons (and many fundamentalist Christians) these are essentially different things. My parents took my rather coyly worded announcement of my same-sex attraction rather well, as the implication was that I was fighting it using prayer and therapy, and would do my best to become straight. What I intend to tell them in the near future is that I am planning on a) living the ‘gay lifestyle,’ i.e., dating men, and b) leaving the Mormon Church for good. I cannot imagine that they will react so calmly to these revelations.