Hold Fast

I still have my original missionary badge! When I attended the ALL (Arizona LDS LGBT) conference this past April, I was privileged to be on a panel of six or so individuals to answer some questions fielded from a moderator before lunch. It was about an hour long, though I must say I could've talked for hours . It was so much fun and exciting to talk directly  to people, more or less, and answer their questions. The Ally Nights we've had in the past in my Tucson group are similar: that is, we would allow others to ask us questions, and we would share our thoughts and stories as LGBT members. Anyway, one question asked was something like, "Should I continue to encourage my child [presumably LGBT] to go on a mission for the church?" This has been a tough thing for me to answer in the past, because my feelings about the mission are complex. On the one hand, I have a foundation of belief in the core tenets of the gospel that were formed from the spiritual experien

In the past 18 months since my personal 'self-revelations' about my sexuality, I've come to intimately understand the Atonement in a way that I haven't before. The Adam and Eve story perfectly illustrates what I've learned. Let me explain. Adam and Eve were given a circumstance of their existence. That is, they were 'born,' more or less, into the Garden of Eden - wonderful, paradisaical, perfect, but spiritually limiting, notwithstanding their privilege of face-to-face communication with the Father. In this perfect circumstance, the Father gave them two very famous, but contradictory commandments: 1. Multiply and replenish the earth, which was impossible in their current circumstance. 2. Do not partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (goodness, so much passive voice in that name). While they complied with 2, they could not comply with 1. And so, they made a choice at a critical moment, ate of the fruit, breaking commandment 2, s

Savannah. Oh my poor Savannah. This whole thing has gone from a triggering video to an international news story. I can no longer simply choose a side. I'm more just stressed about how terrible and divisive this situation is becoming. I'll admit, at first, I was triggered, and I was all about protecting Savannah. Now I'm just stressed. Now I'm thinking, "Goodness, the stake presidency counselor who shut off her microphone is probably hiding away, and could be staving off death threats...who knows?" This is all just awful. Personally, nothing makes me more stressed about finding my way through my own intersectionality of being LDS and LGBT than hearing the common refrains of "Just leave the church!" from the left or "You can't be in a relationship!" from the right, which are the only things that pop up when a situation like this occurs. As soon as these attitudes start creeping up, I start to not be able to sleep. So I'm goi

When you experience a paradigm shift, brought on by a sudden realization that you are not what you were hoping you were, a lot of cognitive dissonance occurs. One must reconcile what they held to be true before the paradigm shift, with the added information gained from this new personal insight. Thus it was when I came out. It was a shift, a serious one. I mean, sure, some would argue that I always knew  that I was gay, and I would agree that somewhere in the back of mind (or in my web browser history as a teenager) was something saying "Yes, Sam, you're gay. Stop denying it." But I just kept denying it anyway. So when I finally accepted it, I had to bring these two facets together, because if I didn't, I would be stuck in a never-ending cycle of confusion. And honestly, considering how I felt in the first month after admitting it to myself (this would be February 2016), I think that the spiritual and cognitive dissonance may have led me to extreme depression and

As my initial entry into this blog, I thought it appropriate to discuss the central theme and name of said blog: Hold Fast. 1 Nephi 8. We born-in-the-covenant LDS folk practically knee-jerk a response: "Oh the Tree of Life vision!" Yes, the Tree of Life vision, as iterated by Lehi and transcribed by his son Nephi, who later went on to clarify the symbolism in his father's original dream. I come to this chapter after some musings as I was driving in my car, thinking in the shower, or goofing off at work. Originally, the thoughts had come during a discussion I had in the ALL group in Phoenix, which stands for Arizona LDS LGBT. There was a scripture study session one Sunday evening at Johnathan and Rachel Manwaring's house, for which I drove all the way up from Tucson to attend. I've been doing this quite a bit actually in the past year, driving all the way up for a two hour shindig, then driving all the way back to Tucson in the same evening. Yeah, I'm a lit