Community Voices

Striving for Understanding

By Jonathan Langford
River Falls, WI, USA

I’ve always wanted to write science fiction and fantasy. Imagine my surprise at finding myself the author of a coming-of-age story about a same-gender attracted teenage Mormon boy.

It started with a conversation in a Mormon literature discussion group several years ago. One of the things we talked about was the lack of fiction about same-gender attracted characters who were committed to staying in the Church. It’s true that you can find nonfiction memoirs—but there are some things fiction is better equipped to do. Fiction has tools for getting inside the minds of characters, showing them in a more complete context while exploring the variations and possibilities of human experience.

It wasn’t my intention to fill that gap. But then a story idea came to me. I ignored it. It wouldn’t go away. Finally, I decided to give it a shot. A year and a half later, I had a book.

Writing this novel was frankly intimidating. I didn’t want to do it wrong, partly because I knew it was something that could be important to many people. Sometimes I didn’t want to do it at all. But it wouldn’t leave me alone. One time I was attending stake conference, listening to a talk about family history, when I had the clear impression that for me right now, writing this novel was my work of trying to turn hearts toward each other in understanding and acceptance. I didn’t feel any guarantee of how it would turn out, but I knew I had to make the attempt.

As a writer, my first goal was to create an engaging story about characters readers would care about. My main intended audience wasn’t those who experience same-gender attraction, though I hoped it might resonate with what they’ve experienced. In particular, it wasn’t especially meant for same-gender attracted youth, despite the age of the protagonist. Rather, I was hoping to reach ordinary believing Mormons who are willing to read something that’s more frank than most of what you’d find in an LDS bookstore about the realities of teenage life, with no particular investment in this issue except a desire to understand and think about how they as Church members might support those who struggle with this challenge.

Other goals I had in mind included the following:

• To present, clearly and without apology, the Church’s teaching on this issue as I understand it: that while it is not a sin to feel such attractions, God has commanded not to act on them; that whatever the source of those attractions may be, the desire to be romantically partnered with someone of the same gender is not part of a person’s eternal nature; and that individuals can still choose to live worthy, faithful lives, regardless of such feelings.
• At the same time, to acknowledge the reality of those feelings for some people and show they are about far more than lust or narrowly defined sexual attraction.
• To present realistically the lives of teenagers in today’s world—including the general crudeness of teenage life, but also spiritual realities such as prayer, scripture study, personal pondering, spiritual feelings, service in the priesthood, and interactions with priesthood leaders.
• To show same-gender attraction as in some ways an ordinary, if challenging, part of life—not all that different from the challenges most teenagers face in trying to live a faithful life according to LDS standards, regardless of orientation.
• To model the support of bishops, friends, and family members.
• To show the basic incompatibility and lack of comprehension between what the gospel teaches on this issue and what the world teaches, and the need for members of the Church ultimately to choose where their loyalties lie.
• To present realistically the challenges that choosing to follow gospel teachings can involve, while ending on an ultimately hopeful and faith-affirming note.

These goals drive much of what happens in the book. For example, one of the major plot strands is Paul’s involvement with his high school’s gay-straight alliance (GSA). Dragged into attending by an acquaintance, at first he feels liberated by the openness he experiences there. It is only over time that he comes to see the gap that separates their way of thinking from the Lord’s and realizes it’s not a place he should be.

Paul starts the book with a real but undeveloped and passive belief in the Church and its teachings. It’s only after he’s been caught up in serious transgression that he realizes his need for greater spiritual strength and embarks on a quest to gain a more active testimony. And it’s only after several months of that quest when, in the middle of defending the Church’s beliefs at a GSA meeting, he finally experiences what he knows to be a testimony.

Paul’s spiritual growth feeds his understanding of what same-gender attraction will mean for him as a believing Latter-day Saint. At the beginning of the story, Paul knows the Church doesn’t approve of homosexuality, but his perception of what homosexuality means has largely been absorbed from the culture around him. As evidence of that, he calls himself gay, not same-gender attracted as Church leaders would prefer. At the end of the book, he still describes himself as gay—but he limits that description in important ways that show his growth toward a more gospel-consistent understanding of himself, even if he’s not all the way there yet. As he tells the GSA:

"I know that’s the way I am, and I know it’s probably not going to change in this life. But I don’t believe it’s who I really am. Being gay—being attracted to other guys—yeah, that’s part of who I am now. But being Mormon, that’s who I am forever."

An inevitable consequence of writing about a teenager is that a lot of the story remains untold. There’s a lot about coming to understand one’s own attractions and how to manage them while staying in the Church that teenagers simply aren’t far enough along to understand. Much is still unsettled at the end of the story: whether Paul will ever marry and have a family, whether his same-gender attraction will diminish over time, how Paul will manage his feelings on an ongoing basis. Such questions belong to a story about the adult Paul (one that I have no current plans to write). How many 16-year-olds, looking ahead, would have a clear idea about the answers to questions such as these?

The book also doesn’t get into issues of therapy or whether Paul’s feelings are biological or environmental in origin, partly because I didn’t want to endorse any particular view or approach on these issues, and partly because I don’t think these are areas most people start to meaningfully explore until after they’re adults. Frankly, I was more interested in the clash of competing loyalties and identities related to how Paul and those around him deal with this challenging fact in his life, rather than delving into the ins and outs of Paul’s gender orientation. I wanted to focus on the part of Paul’s story that’s universal, reaching beyond the specific issue of sexual orientation to the basic challenge all LDS Church members must face: that is, whether he’ll follow the world’s way or the Lord’s.

Responses have mostly been positive. A ward member who read my book said that for the first time, she felt like she understood how someone dealing with this issue could stay in the Church. A friend from university days wrote that my book helped reconcile him to the Church’s position on this issue, which he’s had difficulty accepting. A priesthood leader said that while reading it, he often thought it should be required reading for bishops and others who are called upon to help youth navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence and faith.

Other responses have been less positive. It’s inevitable, of course, that some people won’t care for parts of the story or find it doesn’t speak to them. More distressing have been the responses from a few vocal people who have chosen on a personal level to attack the righteousness and motives of me, Chris Bigelow (my publisher), and those who have endorsed the book. I’ve had people distort my views, question my commitment to the gospel (in one case calling me a latter-day Korihor), and speculate about my motives and the state of my marriage.

I can’t help but be dismayed by such reactions. At the same time, I try to remember something I wrote to my missionary son shortly after his initial encounter with the reality of rejection in the mission field: “The rejection and negative responses and the acceptance and positive responses don’t actually get counted in the same category. You don’t subtract rejection from acceptance (or vice versa) and come up with a tally of success.... Or to put it another way: You’re called to teach the people who will ultimately listen to you. The others don’t count.”

The same is true of storytelling (though the circumstances are hardly parallel otherwise). I have to write for those readers who will be touched by my story and find that it has value for them. To the others, my hope is that they may find stories that speak powerfully to them in ways that mine doesn’t—filling literature’s great promise of helping us see, love, and understand each other better as children of one Father in Heaven.

Community Voices consists of submissions from men and women in the North Star community. Take a moment to read other Community Voices, or find out how you can get involved by submitting your own essay.