Participatory Mode Activity - Interview with an Exmormom

For this project, I interviewed my friend Jake. Jake was born and raised in the church, but has since left it. He is also gay. Anything spoken by me (Jeff) is in bold. Anything spoken by Jake is in regular text.

When did you first know you were gay?

I didn’t accept that I was gay until I was 19 years old. But all throughout my teenage years I fought my sexuality subconsciously, basically. But I wasn’t recognizing it or accepting it for what it was. After I accepted it when I was 19 years old, I was able to look back and see from—even when I was a child I could identify that it had always been there. But it wasn’t something that I knew and accepted till I was 19.

To use the same phrasing, when did you first know you were Mormon? In other words, when did you first feel like you personally believed in the LDS Church as a religion?

Probably in ninth or tenth grade when I started seminary. That was probably when my belief was at its strongest, and when I wanted to go to every possible meeting and activity and do the things that I was supposed to do.

What do you think made you want to do the things you were supposed to do?

I think because that time of my life—and through seminary classes—it was the first experience I had with actually trying to dissect certain scriptures or parts of the gospel. And I started to realize that it was more than this thing that I just did every Sunday. I realized that I wanted the scriptures to be more than just words I read every day. I wanted to understand it as something bigger and more complex and true. So I set out to do that.

When did you first know or feel that you didn’t believe in the church?

The first major doubts that I had—where I questioned if I had been right my whole life—was when I went through the temple the first time. It really unsettled me and it didn’t feel right. So that was the first time, I think, that there was something that I was supposed to love about the church and I didn’t’ like it at all. And I wanted it to not exist.

And then as far as when I first knew that I didn’t believe in the church—in a more assertive sense—was summer 2014, when I was turning 21 years old. That one wasn’t as much a moment as much as it was just a process that whole summer. I just started thinking more about that temple experience and thinking about other things that I’d heard or that I’d read about or thought about on my own that seemed to not match up with what I always wanted the church to be. So I started to look more into those issues. To explore those feelings or thoughts. It was toward the end of that summer that I came to the conclusion that I didn’t believe the church was true.

If I’m understanding right, some of those things that you heard or saw or read would sometimes be called Anti-Mormon literature, right?

Yeah.

How do you feel about that term? Do you feel like that kind of stuff is discussed fairly?

I think it is discussed extremely unfairly. I think that 95% of what members of the church consider to be Anti-Mormon is not what I would consider to be Anti-Mormon. I think things that should be considered Anti-Mormon are things that are making things up, or things that have an extremely hateful or biased attitude towards the church.

But what I learned throughout my questioning and research was that a lot of things that are labeled as Anti-Mormon by members of the church—really all they’re doing is exploring historical events and the documents and journals that we have as proof of those events or things like that. They’re just people who want to discuss what actually happened. They’re not these angry, bitter people who want to tear the church apart. They just want to find the truth, and they just want to share what they have determined to be the truth with other people.

So some people say the truth is Anti-Mormon because the truth doesn’t match up with what the church teaches. So I could see that viewpoint in some ways. But I don’t think that what most of what people consider to be Anti-Mormon is Anti-Mormon. Most of the stuff that I have an issue with is stuff that the church has addressed in their own materials. They might just emphasize different aspects of it to make it seem a little different or less heavy than it happened or might have happened.

What do you think of Mormons who have never encountered this kind of information?

Well, what I think of them is that they’re still great people, of course. I mean, that position would have described me for the first 20 years of my life. So I definitely don’t feel any kind of disdain or anger towards people who stand up strongly for their beliefs, especially if they haven’t encountered that kind of information. And even if they have, they still have the right to stand up for what they believe. So, I mean, my opinion is that many people—if they did encounter that information they would reconsider their beliefs, basically. But there’s just such a strong stigma of reading anything that’s not officially put out by the church that no one ever goes near any of that and they assume that it’s all Anti-Mormon.

Do you feel that your sexual orientation played any kind of a role between your doubt and belief during that period of time?

Yeah, it did. I realized one major issue that kind of consumed me was that I couldn’t believe I was part of an organization whose teachings had made me feel suicidal or ashamed—basically all my life. So, yeah, I would say my sexual orientation played a part in that way.

Also, anything that had ever been taught to me about my sexual orientation in the church just did not resonate with me at all. I could not understand how any of it could be possible, it didn’t feel right. So it did play a part in it in that aspect. But I wouldn’t say that I lost my belief in it or that I left the church because I’m gay. That was definitely not a driving factor.

Obviously this is not a very fair question because it’s speculation. But if you hadn’t encountered any of the other issues in the church, and if it had only been your sexual orientation, do you think that you would have stayed in the church? Or do you think there still would have been big enough issues between reconciling the two that it would have—you know—what do you think your actions would have been?

One big way that my sexual orientation did play a part in things was it tore me apart so much about what I should do with my life that it brought me to this place of, “Okay, if I’m going to commit to this gospel and be alone for the rest of my life, I want to address all these doubts that I have and make sure it’s true.” Or vice versa, you know, “If I’m gonna damn my soul by having relationships with men, I wanna address these doubts first and not leave it hanging.”

But if I would still be in the church if I hadn’t encountered that information—yeah, I think I would. It’s  a hard question to answer because I know I would be so miserable that, maybe that on its own would be enough to make me start searching for more answers which would maybe eventually lead me to encounter the same information. So it’s just hard to imagine. But without encountering that information I do believe that, yeah, I would still be in the church.

Lastly, I’ll just ask—what are your religious beliefs now, or what’s your religious stance?

Very agnostic. I have no sense of spirituality or believing in any kind of higher power or energy. I just believe that things are what they are. I feel it’s unfair to claim absolute knowledge of anything. That’s why I don’t consider myself an atheist. Because I think that just because there’s no evidence of a god—that’s no proof that there is no god. If that makes sense. So, I try to be open to any kind of religious idea that might resonate with me. But none of them have at this point in time because I just can’t find myself wanting or feeling that there’s any kind of higher power.

Okay, thank you!