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Hello and welcome to Called to Queer, where we hold space for the queer Mormon women, genderqueer, and intersex experiences. I’m Kate, and my pronouns are they/them. And I’m it for you today. Today we have a short episode and it’s me solo. It is a piece that I wrote for Medium, and you can find it on my Medium account.
Uh, you can also find it in my Instagram bio, @latterdaylez. It’s a piece that I felt called to write and I wanted out there in the world and I wasn’t sure how people were going to take it, but uh, it actually has sparked a lot of [00:01:00] conversation among the Instagram crowd,
I think that people are still linking it there, so I just suggested that we have an episode where I read it. Um, And so that’s what today’s episode is. So it’s a short episode. It is called New Year Temple Truths, and it was published on January 1st. It has a content warning for sexual assault and suicidal idea.
January 2nd, 2019. I showed up at the Ochre Mountain Temple for the 10:00 AM session. I’d been to the temple the month before, so I wasn’t expecting much from the session other than a spiritual renewal for the new year. What I got instead changed everything. I’d just received my temple. Recommend back just a few months before in [00:02:00] November, 2018.
My bishop decided I should give it up after a sexual assault by my fiance. That ended our engagement because my bishop didn’t know much about sexual assault. He thought it best to withhold my recommend for the time being. In addition to relating my sexual encounters to my bishop, I provided other intimate details in my private life.
I told him how I knowingly put myself in a vulnerable position ignoring major red flags, because I thought being engaged to a man I knew was pushing my physical boundaries would still save me from my ultimate spiritual fatality. I knew I was gay, and I knew I was gay because I was madly in love with a.
I met with the bishop routinely for months. I told him my thoughts, my text messages, my situation, my fear, my shame, my loneliness, my suicidality. He took all that in. He knew every detail, and he handed me back. My temple [00:03:00] recommend to end 2018. If I had been in Utah, I’m sure my situation would’ve been handled entirely differently, but this was Southern California, not Utah, and I was honest and forth.
I told him about the harassment I was facing for being in love with said woman, and he understood when he began getting the phone calls too. Then when my state president received the phone calls, it was the bishop who decided whether I’d face a disciplinary council. They were still called that in 2018.
In 2019 or not. He defended me. He told the stick president. I had been completely honest about my situation about. I had said and done and that none of it warranted the counsel. I would add here also that while he didn’t understand my, uh, sexual assault abuse, he did understand the emotional abuse that I was facing and that others were facing by this individual.
So [00:04:00] where he, he failed to understand, um, abuse in one situation. He really did and was very well aware of abuse in in another situation, and stalking and abuse and intimidation and manipulation. All of those things were happening. By the end of the year, I had my temple recommended hand again, still in love with a woman.
After such a difficult 2018, it seemed only fitting to begin 2019 that the.
What I didn’t know when I walked in that day though, was that it was the first day of New Temple. I sat and listened and something overcame me. In Mormonism, we speak about the spirit and how it can come in a still small voice, but in this instance, it washed over me in waves and a bold voice. The new wording of the temple language opened my mind to the impressions I had been feeling for the previous six months.
I was shifting, [00:05:00] finding space, leaning into my queerness just as a church was shifting, considering how to make space and considering a step towards queerness. After the session, I rushed home to tell my mom about the experience. I told her what I had seen and what had reverberated in my mind.
There will come a day when you can be married to her if you so choose.
There’s no point in this story that is not dripping with Mormonism. I did every single thing to the t I was exact in the process. I think that is the key here. The process is perceived as exact, but my experience would’ve differed greatly across state lines. The process is a kissing. But in every instance, I defaulted to priesthood authority and priesthood authority told me I was set, I was safe, and I went to the temple where there’s nothing with I Mormonism that would indicate that this experience did not come [00:06:00] from God, the divine.
Either the process is broken or the priesthood authority that authorized my visit was a mistake, or the thought didn’t come from God in the. Where we learn is young Latter Day Saints, Satan cannot enter even in our minds
in order for Latter Day Saints to deny my experience, they either had to deny the process of priesthood authority I went through, or
to deny the way I’ve always been taught, the spirit speaks to us. For me, it was undeniable. In the future, I could be married in the temple to the woman I loved. If I. After telling my mom, who tour undying credit, validated my experience and wept with me, I raced to see the woman I loved and I told her about it.
The next day we would go to the temple again together to see about this new temple language and to hope and pray for another life altering experience. I held her [00:07:00] hand at the temple, looked into her eyes as she looked into mine, and she knew that I had all the conviction in the world. I knew my. Four months later, the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints reversed its harmful and dangerous.
November, 2015 policy a year later, that reversal was noted in a changed general handbook, which led B Y U to rightly delete its homosexuality clause within the honor code. Since then, the church pendulum has swung again away from queerness. What I’ve learned throughout these past four years is that I have to stay true to my own convictions, my own authority, my own spiritual autonomy.
My experiences with the divine are not truth, but they are certainly my truth. To deny that just is to deny a part of me and I’m tired of denying parts of me. I’m tired of folks trying to prove or disprove Mormonism. Mormonism is lowercase true for those who believe, and still it isn’t [00:08:00] Capital T truth. Those moments in the temple for me are lower T truth. It’s how my brain, body, and spirit understand the world and the world beyond what we can experience with our five senses.
It isn’t capital T truth. My truth isn’t anyone else’s, but as a trans mass person, I’ve been told all my life what I’m supposed to like, what I’m supposed to look like and dress like and be. It isn’t just that. I’ve been told there are dangerous consequences for not complying with those orders. People withheld love, affection, nurturing when I was a child and replaced it with contempt and disgust.
You learned really early on. On the very real dangers of not complying with what the world says you need to be, including the risk of complete ostracization, and you never outgrow those dangerous as a trans, non-binary or queer person. What might be true for some when it comes to sex, [00:09:00] gender is not universal truth, and certainly so-called traditional gender roles are not true for me.
I spent so much time living in other people’s truth. I’m only my own, and my truth says that I connected with the defined world in a sacred place and it brought me peace and joy in a time when I was so scared. I didn’t know if I’d ever find it. I chose to view this as a miracle. It was a miracle to me.
It saved my life and I believe in miracles. It saved people. That is my truth. We are taught from the time we can talk to bear our testimony beginning with, I know This Church is true. Have you ever considered what that means? Is the church that existed pre 1978 true? Is this the same church?
Are we a church that believes the ninth article of Faith is true? because if we do, I believe that this is a place that holds this temple. [00:10:00] Revelation for me. If we believe the ninth article of Faith, can it be true that I’m following the standards of a future true church? One more true than this one. What does it mean that the church is true right now? Because it’s already different than it was in January, 2019. It changed four months later, and again, a year later. This latter day saying, obsession with capital T. Truth rather than our own truths leaves little room to experience all the ways that the divine can show up in our lives.
It leaves little room to choose a God-given agency, to have faith in something bigger than ourselves. To have faith in some places where we can speak with the divine, like the temple. I don’t need to believe exactly what another latter day Saint believes to be a latter day saint.
I can have faith in that okra mountain temple as a New Year’s miracle. I receive my own truth and revelation that God loves [00:11:00] me, loves my love, and waits for a day I can be married there if I so choose. I believe it was a miracle that I could hold the hand up with the woman I love in the Jordan River Temple the next day, and I believe that four months after.
We moved one step closer towards a truer church, one that took a step towards love and towards the necessary embrace of queerness. Thank you for listening.
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