I'm not sure where I'm going to be going with this whole project. It's not something I ever thought I'd be writing about. My past blogs have been about my family mostly, containing all the things we were doing including church callings, temple attendance, activities etc. This won't be that. Even though I currently still technically have a calling my next stop is texting the Bishop to remedy that.
My name isn't actually Molly Mormann. I do however feel a connection to that name since it was actually my grandmothers name. Now my gramma wasn't a member of the church, far from it. She was a child bride, married at 14, had 2 kids by the time she was 16, smoked 2 packs a day, drove long haul truck from the time I was 10 until I was 18, and married a 24 year old man when she was 48. She lived an interesting life. Molly was outspoken and pushy and got what she wanted when it came to her order at a restaurant or confronting some other innocent bystander about something she felt slighted on. A phrase in our family is "I'm gonna go Molly Mormann on them" and we all know to back up and get out of that persons way! So I named the blog after her because I feel like I'm about to go Molly Mormann on the church.
I've been a member my whole life basically. My family converted when I was 5, so I was baptized at 8 and passed all the appropriate LDS milestones with flying colors. I'm now 47 and things have taken a turn, so much that even a year ago I didn't know this would happen. I'm going to just write today about how it all started.
I have 6 children ranging in ages from 24 down to 7. This last year 2 of those children have come out to us as LGBTQ. This was not a shock at all since I had suspected for a while that they were queer. I also suspect I may have more kiddos that fall on this spectrum but I'm letting them take the lead and waiting for them to choose their moment to let us know.
Having kids that came out wasn't a big testimony shaking incident for me like it can be for some families. I know that sometimes it rocks family dynamics and can ruffle relationships. For us it wasn't a big deal. We still love them, we support them 100% and frankly my only hope for all my kids is for them to be happy no matter where they are in life, so if these queer kids find happiness I'm all for it. I happily wear my pride pin on my sweater to church, I also wear converse shoes with my skirts with rainbow shoe laces. I'm an out and proud ally. I've gotten some really great feedback and made some really great friends by showing my LGBTQ support.
My shelf started cracking a little bit when I realized how the church spends my tithing money. I guess I just always figured it went to temples, buildings and helping the poor. I was so naive. I started realizing that my funds when to places like BYU and other church schools who are openly hurting LGBTQ students with their policies and codes. I was shocked to hear how much money and effort went into Prop 8 in California, even though I should have known that one long ago. Also money going to anti-LGBTQ legislation and lots of other places I'm not comfortable with it going. So I stopped paying. I still donate my funds where I see fit but because the church doesn't see those funds my temple recommend was pulled. Even though I answered every other question correctly, even though I still believed all the people were all the things (prophets, seers, etc etc). I still was barred from attending the temple just because I didn't pay the money.
This left a really bad taste in my mouth and it was the thread that I started pulling that had everything else unraveling around me.
Now here I sit. Not wanting my calling anymore, not wanting my kids exposed to mormon rhetoric and feeling more at peace that I have in a long time.
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