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...