Title: Is there sufficient motivation for Mormon homosexuals to follow the law of chastity being that there is not an option for temple marriage for them?
Alternate title: Give Me One Good Reason to Stay Motivated
Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution long after the emotion with which it was made has passed. -Brian Tracy
Calvin: In my youth, there were times when I would be all fired up by a fireside and I felt as if I could conquer my feelings of homosexuality, stay morally clean, right the wrongs of life and fix Satan himself. I’d start exercising every morning. I’d read scriptures at night, and I’d quit saying flippn’ (an Idaho thing).
I was good. And when I was good I was very, very good. And then I tried to be better than good. It lasted for a couple of months if I was lucky.
Julie: I had a round-to-it, and I know what you mean. It’s hard to keep the inspiration of Sunday bright when on Monday morning life comes at you again.
Calvin: Each decision we make, each goal we set and each road we travel is based on some type of motivation. What compels me to get out of the bed in the morning and try to be more Christ-like may not be an incentive for you. And what inspires you to pursue your aspirations may mean nothing to me.
Julie: There are a lot of things I do because I want to, like reading the scriptures and having tasty food in the house to eat when I’m hungry. But there are even more things I do because I know I should, even if I don’t want to do them. Scrubbing out the toilet in the boy’s bathroom is not something I enjoy, but it’s necessary to keep my family healthy and that’s something I want. Sometimes we have to push through and stay motivated to do something that’s difficult or painful because we are committed to the end result.
Calvin: That’s the mature thing. If having a clean and healthy family is your goal then you need to be willing to put up with scrubbing and disinfecting in order to achieve that. It’s cerebral. You have to decide what you really want.
Julie: In nature, it’s far less complicated. Some animals spend a great deal of time stalking and attacking their prey in order to satisfy their innate and instinctual motivation to hunt and to avoid the pain of hunger. However, the more evolved we become, the more we seek rewards that are higher than simply an extension of our momentary want or physical need; stalk the duck, have it for dinner.
Calvin: My children are motivated by money. It used to be that I could prod them along to do what I wanted by using hugs and loves. Those days are over. For today’s young mortals, money is the thing, or food, or X-Box time. They are motivated by a reward that feeds their immediate appetites and has no natural connection to the actual goal. Example: Be nice to your Aunt Lynette, let her kiss you without making any faces and I will order pizza when she leaves.
I would prefer that my children were nice on their own and let her plant kisses on them because they love her and want to make her happy -- motivated not only by the natural extension of showing love (which is getting love back) but by an understanding that putting up with temporary and mushy discomfort will make Aunt Lynette really happy which in turn will make them feel happy. (Part of the problem could be that Aunt Lynette has fingernails sharper that Ginsu knives and wears perfume so strong that it killed our parakeet, which, ironically was named after her.)
Regardless, I want my children to be kind to Aunt Lynette, and if this means I have to put the pizza delivery guy through college, so be it.
We all have an Aunt Lynette in our lives who we are expected to hug at reunions or during the family bowling tournament. Depending on how much we care about our relationship with her we may hug a lot or hide out in the backyard chicken coop when she visits.
If your goal is to stay morally clean or to become morally clean, it is important to understand both the type and the quality of your motivation. When life gets difficult and stressful or when pressure and temptations come, it is the quality of motivation that determines how committed one is able to remain.
Let’s look at this idea using something we Mormons are very familiar with; Hugging.
Good Reason for Hugging – Because I want an anonymous or earthly reward (think pizza or x-box time or tens & twenties), or to avoid some kind of punishment (think of lifting weights in the Big House or being grounded for a week of no cell phone).
Better Reason for Hugging – Natural extension of action: Cause I hafta, duty to country and Father, or for an afterlife reward – if I make it through this life.
Best Reason for Hugging – I love everyone and I want it to show. I love Aunt Lynette, my parents, and the Lord. I show the Lord I love Him by serving others. Therefore I will hug Aunt Lynette no matter how painful it will be.
All of these reasons will motivate us to one degree or another. But when the pizza runs out or there is no authority figure there to punish us, or when we decide that the afterlife is just too far away to be real, the first two levels can fail us. It is only when we carry the motivation inside of us and when the commitment has become a part of who we are that we are able to consistently ignore the perfume, let Aunt Lynette do her worst and still make it through.
Getting Motivated to be Chaste
Julie: However, we aren’t talking about hugging. We’re talking about dealing with the strong passions associated with sexuality -- specifically homosexuality. Cal, how did you stay motivated to keep your life on track and stay chaste?
Calvin: Let me first make it clear to you an unfortunate reality. I did not stay chaste. I was the living example of the man who built my life on the sand only to have everything wash away. I choose today to build my house and keep it in a different order than I did then. However, keeping clean and getting clean are based on the same principals.
Originally I found motivation in trying to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to be considered strange or odd. I was also afraid what the church would do if they found out I had been sexually active with men. I was afraid of what my family and friends would think of me because Church and the rest of my life were so closely entwined.
Then there came a different concern. I was not at all thrilled with the prospect of AIDS. I was not as concerned about dying as much as I was in contracting the disease and having everyone know what had caused my death. It scared me and kept me on the morally clean bandwagon. But not for long. It became clear that my need for physical emotional contact was stronger than my fear of dying.
The motivation to change my behavior, -- my ultimate motivation to be morally clean -- happened when I finally figured out that what God was asking me to do was to obey The message could not have been any clearer had it been posted on my Facebook page or danced around like the kid holding up the “two for one pizza deal” on the corner.
The ultimate motivation was a promise made to me in a blessing that Heavenly Father would make everything alright for me in the end if I would do His will. I don’t have a contract signed from Heavenly Father, so some say that I am a fool not to go after the physical/sexual here and now while I still have a body. But I do have the assurance of the heart that if I do as I have been asked to do things will go well for me in the end.
Some suggest that we are motivated to obey Heavenly Father because He has promised those who obey will have eternal rewards -- we choose to follow the commandments because we expect to be compensated for our efforts. I get this completely. Compensation for my efforts is a huge motivation for me. It’s not a bad reason, but there are better.
We will feel more secure in our ability to do what is right when we are doing it for unselfish reasons. This, in turn, leads to finding pleasure and joy in our obedience We find pleasure in doing right -- which in turn gives us more strength in our commitments.
Elder Royden G. Derrick said,
“The Lord has promised us resurrection and immortality, but these are not a reward. According to Webster’s dictionary, a reward is “something that is given for some service or attainment.”… They are not a reward—they are a gift—for we have rendered no service nor attained any accomplishment to warrant these as a reward. The gift is from the Savior; it comes through His atoning sacrifice.”
Julie: In other words, eternal life is not a bribe as in, don't do that and you can win this. Eternal life is an extension of serving others and therefore the Lord. But in this world of minimum wage work days and saving up your money to buy a cooler car, most of us may not understand the idea of doing something with no expectation of a physical return. We are motivated by things, or fear, or desires for rewards and privilege, instant gratification or social acceptance.
Calvin: Yes, at least that’s how I understand it. It takes maturity and effort to raise our motivations from the simple and base to the more holy and Christ like. As with every effort we make to be more like our Savior, Satan will attempt to trip us up and stop us at every turn.
Those who are still influenced entirely by pizza and x-box time, or “eternal damnation” will not understand.
Julie: So, you are saying there is something better than sex, and its obedience? However, straight people get to obey, be morally clean, and then marry and have all the pizza they want. How is that fair?
Calvin: Well, that blows a hole right out of my buildup for my “Finding Something Better Than Pizza (SEX)” segment. I think I have an answer to that, but I want to be able to present it just right. Give me two pages for Ricky Reader and then I will tell you what I think about the fairness of marriage and then sex for straights, and chastity and then no sex for homosexuals.
Julie: Just don’t get sidetracked.
The Fractured Parable of Ricky Reader
Ricky can’t read and is flunking out of Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School. He has many school assignments that he is unable to complete due to his
Little Ricky Reader learns about Dick & Jane, Dr. Seuss, and eventually moves on to Hogwarts. His muggle parents give him a shilling a page to encourage him to keep reading. Ricky complies because he wants better marks at school, a social life and a ride on the Hogwarts Express during Christmas vacation.
He is a good kid who very much wants to make his parents proud and to get a truck with a roll-bar – though not necessarily in that order.
He practices his much-improved reading and comprehension skills on more challenging novels like those by Steven King, Dean Koonz, and Dan Brown. Richard Reader, (as he now prefers to be called) feeds his new-found hunger for knowledge and he is satisfied. Gosh darn it, he just loves to read!
Ricky gets hit by a truck. His last words are, “What do you think will happen if I ignore the flashing lights and cross here instead?” He dies in the street still clutching his Mary Higgins Clark mystery to his chest without ever knowing that there were better and thicker books he could have died holding. (Apologies to Sister Higgins Clark) The End
Alternative, More Positive Ending at Both my Wife’s
& Julie's Insistence
Ricky, at the pleading of his girlfriend, crosses the walk at the intersection and all is well. He is then introduced to the works of William Shakespeare. He discovers all the clever insights and depth connected with classic literature and realizes that there is much more to learn than he ever had imagined.
Calvin: I don’t know if I would have been able to come up with the idea on my own - the wider view that there is more out there to see and choose from than is sitting in front of me at the moment – if I hadn’t had teachers who knew when to yell warnings at me. They knew when to encourage me with tantalizing pieces of literature, or dangled a carrot (or a Twinkie) in front of me so I would look up and out and beyond.
There is more to read than Dr. Seuss – who books, by the way, I love dearly. There is more to eat than pizza. There is more to love than sex, and there is more to happiness than simply satisfying my own hunger and needs with the first thing I grab.
And maybe I have been staling a little because I don’t have an answer to Julie’s question! I don’t know why straight people in the church can marry and have sex and fill all those physical/sexual/emotional desires, and gay people in the church cannot.
There were years when I felt that, due to homosexuality, my life would always be on hold because I couldn’t bridge homosexuality and Mormonism. Those that are both SGAttracted and Mormon often believe that the feelings they have now will always torment them and that the future holds only a dismal, empty world of loneliness and abstinence. Here is why;
Mormons do not allow homosexuals to marry those of their own sex in the temple. Yet everything about the Mormon religion directs members to be worthy of a temple recommend so that temple marriage is a goal.
It seems unfair. And the idea that there is more to life than what we know today seems like an empty promise with no essence or enticement.
But I am obeying the commandment anyway.
But I am obeying the commandment anyway.
Julie: I have felt that way, and I am not SGAttracted. I think everyone feels that way at different times in their lives. When we are going through challenges and trials it’s easy to forget that things will get better, often in ways we can’t even imagine.
Calvin: That we can’t imagine is a good point. I can’t imagine with my natural senses how this can be resolved unless there is something going on that I can’t imagine, that I can’t comprehend, that has not been revealed remembering that there is much to be revealed. These cravings, urges, and hungers are God-given, inspired and exist to encourage us to yearn for something more, better and longer lasting than what we see in front of us now.
“How difficult it is to teach the natural man,” Brigham Young declared, “who comprehends nothing more than that which he sees with the natural eye! … Talk to him about angels, heavens, God, immortality, and eternal lives, and it is like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal to his ears; it has no music to him; there is nothing in it that charms his senses, soothes his feelings, attracts his attention, or engages his affections...”
Julie: Just being clear here, Calvin. You are saying that there is more to life than gay sex? Because that’s not what gay people say.
Calvin: I am trying to tell homosexuals who are also practicing Mormons and believe in eternal life that the Savior is telling us that there is something that we may not see or understand that will be worth the wait, worth the effort of staying morally clean, worth the effort of becoming morally clean.
And, surprisingly enough, we are still talking motivation here -- as in what could possibly motivate me to stay morally clean and active in the LDS Church while my friends who are gay and not in the Church are out having the time of their life – or so it seems. The answer is the Church and the teachings of Christ. Come follow me. Do his will and you will be blessed more than your ability to receive blessings. If this appeals to you, the forfeiting sex in this life is worth it.
One last factor you may want to consider
It was the Spirit that confirmed the validity of that fireside of my youth. That was what touched my heart. When I involved the Spirit in my goal setting, in my quest for self-betterment, I quickly tapped into the power of God. When I involve the Spirit, He will be there in those quiet moments when I am losing grasp of my motivation to do right.
The comforter will give comfort. He will also rekindle the fire that is our motivation. When we rely on Him, we have the ultimate training partner. Involving the Spirit is our secret weapon.
Calvin: I hate it when you have the last word.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. Leonardo da Vinci - who was gay, BTW
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