More Mormon “Love” for The Gays
You’ve probably already heard about the gay couple who was confronted, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and ejected from Mormon-owned Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City with a trespassing citation—for a kiss on the cheek. Per the couple, they were also told by disgusted Mormon security guards that their behavior was gross and unnatural.
Here is the Mormon church’s response, via ksl.com (website of the Mormon-owned KSL television channel):
Two individuals came on Church property and were politely asked to stop engaging in inappropriate behavior—just as any other couple would have been. They became argumentative and used profanity and refused to leave the property. They were arrested and then given a citation for criminal trespass by SLPD.
—Mormon spokesperson Kim Farah
“Any other couple,” Mormon spokesperson Kim Farah? So when a heterosexual couple walks across Main Street Plaza holding hands, and one happens to give the other a peck on the cheek, they are routinely confronted by security guards and kicked off Mormon property? What about the heterosexual couples who take engagement or wedding photos on the plaza, photos in which many of them are caught on film kissing and hugging on your church’s property? Do you send your minions to round them up as well for engaging in “inappropriate behavior”?
No, you don’t, and you know you don’t. This couple was approached and kicked out because they were gay and had the audacity to show affection on Mormon church property.
Now, the Mormon church does own Main Street Plaza, and they have the right to refuse entrance to or to eject whomever they please. And maybe this unpleasantness really comes down to a handful of bigoted security guards, and is not official Mormon church policy. But the Mormon church wants to have it both ways: it wants to campaign openly and fiercely against gay rights on a national level, and still pretend to love the gays. Don’t believe them for a second. If an organization that really loved the gays were involved in a situation like this one, they would immediately clarify the behavior policy governing their property (something Farah reportedly has refused to do), apologize for the actions of a few security guards in singling out a gay couple, and announce that those security guards have now either been fired or are undergoing training on how to deal with homosexual couples.
The Mormon church is homophobic. Homophobia is behind all of its anti-gay actions—not love, not tolerance, not high-mindedness, but hate and bigotry. Don’t let them get away with sugar-coating it any longer.
Like
July 13th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I am constantly baffled by the fact that the LDS Church feels compelled to defend the actions of stupid employees more than anything else. So, rather than censure the security guards for being, well, cavemen, they instead defend them. I think it has to do with circling the wagons and the persecution complex. Maybe once they get beyond the idea that any Mormon is inherently more important than any homosexual, they can start addressing their homophobia. Until then, it’ll just be more crap like this.
alea´s last blog ..my personal problems are mostly described with homophones
July 13th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Right on brother! Fight the power!
July 13th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
“The church contends the couple was “asked to stop engaging in inappropriate behavior just as
any other couple would have been.”
Except that for ‘any other [straight] couple’ “offensive, indecent, obscene, lewd or disorderly speech, dress or conduct” would have constituted a lot more than a kiss on the cheek. It’s a real pity that Aune swore at the security guards (no matter how understandable that was) because you just know that if this goes to court that it will be used as the reason they were removed and given citations.
chosha´s last blog ..ink notes #1
July 13th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Yes, it’s a pity he swore, especially since profanity is doubly offensive to the tender-eared Mormons who live around here. *sigh*
July 13th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
The Mormon church is homophobic.
That’s the bottom line.
I really, really detest LDR PR. It’s transparently false and self-serving.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
you probably won’t like me for saying so, but, as you may know I’m LDS and I really like gay people. I grew up with my moms best gay friend renting out our basement apartment of our house. I think, personally that if God gave us free agency that means we shouldn’t judge others. Not all mormons are anti-gay. I can list many lds people I know personally who would vote for gay marraige even. I, too, was offended that the couple was kicked out and thought it was wrong. Personally, I believe in God & the church but I don’t think men are perfect and that who you love is between you & God.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
you probably won’t like me for saying so, but, as you may know I’m LDS and I really like gay people.
I don’t dislike people just because they’re Mormon, and I certainly don’t dislike people because they like gay people. :D I’m not offended by the idea that individual Mormons such as yourself aren’t homophobic—quite the contrary. In fact (and this is going to sound horribly clichéd) several of my friends fit that description. But that doesn’t change two facts:
No amount of tolerance and openness from the members can make up for the institutionalized homophobia that starts at the top. Although eventually, hopefully, the tolerance can eventually spread to the top.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Hi Sean,
I think that you’re being too polite and generous to say that the Church is homophobic. I’d put it more bluntly: the Church is militantly anti-gay. If there was anything surprising about this incident, it was that Darth Packer didn’t personally come over and spray the crowd down with bullets to take as many homosexuals out as possible, and if heterosexuals died, it was all for the best in order to stop the contamination of the herd by the homosexuals. After all, the heterosexuals would go straight to the Celestial Kingdom, courtesy of the Dark Master and Commander, Lord Packer, himself.
Furthermore, when I say that Lord Packer is anti-gay, I’m being literal. The Church wouldn’t have noticed or cared had the couple consisted of two females. Instead, it consisted of two males, and this is vitally important. It is specifically gay males that the Church opposes to the very death. Only males are seen as a threat, and not females, because females are now, as they have always been, invisible in the Church. The Church is a fraternity. There is no room in it for females but as second-class citizens on a good (exceptionally good) day, and more typically, as brood mares.
I further suspect that due to the Church’s male-centric nature, not an insignificant amount of anti-gay sentiment arises from the projection of sexual orientation insecurities from allegedly heterosexual members onto the out-group homosexuals in order to avoid suspicion. Gay males are a radical threat to the Church, whose doctrines hang by a thread even in the minds and hearts of members. To see a gay couple happy is perhaps the severest blow imaginable to the Church’s procrustean, heterosexist doctrines.
If the Church behaves this way toward gay males, why doesn’t it just actively murder children with Down Syndrome, for instance, or non-whites, or those who have been excommunicated for heresy? What accounts for the violence that the Church harbors toward gays? It’s not minor. They despise us to the core.
Steve
:-)
Steve
July 15th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Steve, I would agree that the Mormon church is “anti-gay” in many ways, although I don’t draw a real distinction between that term and “homophobic.” And some of the church’s actions in the past have been villainous—the shock and aversion therapy programs that went on at BYU, the smear campaigns against gays during the last election and in elections before that, and the callous disregard for all the gay suicides that happen on the church’s watch.
Packer is also, or has also been, vociferously, explicitly anti-gay and homophobic, to the point of counseling young men to physically assault homosexuals to ward off unwanted sexual advances.
But you are wrong to suggest that either the Mormon church or Packer have explicitly or implicitly implied that gays should be mown down with a machine gun. This kind of over-the-top rhetoric is wrong and harmful, since anyone can see that the Mormon church is neither overtly murderous, nor a larger clone of the Westboro Baptist church, which may lead people to dismiss real, fact-based claims against the Mormon church and its leaders.
I also am not convinced that you are correct when you say “The Church wouldn’t have noticed or cared had the couple consisted of two females.” We’re talking about what a particular set of security guards would have noticed or cared about, not “The Church” in the abstract. Would the security guards have kicked out a lesbian couple who hugged and kissed on Main Street Plaza? We don’t have any evidence for or against that question; I personally think they would have. Would Mormon spokesperson Kim Farah have issued a similar statement if a lesbian couple had been involved instead of a gay male couple? Again, if the lesbian couple had gone public with their treatment the way Aune and Jones did, I think the answer is yes.
Demonizing the Mormon church and Boyd Packer and turning them into two-dimensional caricatures of themselves is not helpful. The leaders of the Mormon church are capable of some really shitty, hateful things, but when they say they love gay people, I think they believe it. I don’t think they really do love us, at least in any sense I recognize as love. But in their minds, everything they do is for our good, the good of the their flock, and the good of the world. Because they are full of “love.”
That’s actually worse, to me, than pure hate, because it’s so hypocritical and mealy-mouthed and self-serving and insidious. If the Mormon church really condoned or promoted murdering homosexuals, no one but a handful of crazies would be on their side. Certainly liberal Mormons wouldn’t be. But as it is they can wreak untold damage on the gays in their midst—and indirectly cause the deaths of hundreds of gay teenagers—and still appear to possess the moral high ground.
So. The following stands for Steve and for all the commenters on this thread or any other: feel free to continue this discussion, but any further comments implying that the Mormon church or its leaders advocate for, condone or would turn a blind eye to the wholesale murder of homosexuals will be deleted. This blog is not a forum for such rhetoric.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Your comment just above me here is extremely well-put and reasoned, Sean. I respect you immensely for not giving in to the ‘caricatures,’ as you put it. You’re right–that type of villianizing does NOT lead to productive dialogue on either side of the fence. Well said.
July 18th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Great article. Great comments!
Doug´s last blog ..singa: @JodyMoon Sounds tasty! :-)
July 24th, 2009 at 2:16 am
I had not heard of this (although I am a little removed from SLC news right now…) and I am absolutely horrified that a peck on the cheek was so “gross and unnatural” that the couple was discharged from the property. But, I suppose, I am not all that surprised. It would take actions on the level of what Steve is suggesting to surprise me at this point. The LDS church has proven, at least to me, that it is no friend to anyone I can think of (besides my parents at sisters, I suppose), and certainly no friend to homosexuals. That said, I am super glad that I do not have to live anywhere near their center of influence and would be interested in taking part in a “kiss in” if I were closer.