And he seemed to have given up trying to convince me. Instead, he said plaintively as a child, “Linda, what can I do to get back to where we used to be?”
It hurt to realize that I had no idea and that maybe we could never go back to where we’d been. But . . . “You could start by seeing the policy change the way I do, the way that Kenneth and Naomi do.”
He spread his hands open wide. “We have to accept that God knows best how to make us become like Him, to be worthy of heaven.”
And now he was saying exactly what I didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t that I thought I knew everything. I just called out prejudice when I saw it. The church had changed its stance on what was policy and what was doctrine before now, on polygamy, on blacks and the priesthood, and there was no reason for me to think it wouldn’t happen again.
“What about Samuel? You really think that he’s supposed to be celibate all his life? Watch his brothers get married and have children and never have any of that, even though the church teaches it’s the most important thing in the world for us to do, to have those eternal families?” I asked.
“Samuel can have those things,” Kurt said. He sounded desperate. Maybe as desperate as I was. “He might have to work harder to get them. He might spend some years finding just the right woman who understands him, but the church’s promise of eternal happiness is available for everyone.”
Back to this? With some kind of reparative therapy to “cure” his gayness, Samuel could marry a woman in the temple and be just like our other sons? Like I had tried to marry Ben and make everything work between us. So long as I didn’t expect him to have sex with me and enjoy it.
What part of “gay” wasn’t Kurt understanding?
I shook my head. “Samuel loves the church so much,” I said. “But it seems to me like the church doesn’t love Samuel back quite as much. Not as he really is. He has to change himself, pretend to be someone else.”
Kurt put thumb and finger to either side of his nose and took a deep breath. “We all have to change,” he said. “We’re all sinners. We have to give up our sins to get into the celestial kingdom.”
I was so tired and frustrated by this. Around and around in circles, that’s all that ever happened. “It’s not the same and you know it.” Giving up sins for Kurt didn’t mean never having a satisfying sex life, never truly being in love with his life partner, and never being able to talk about who he was without stigma.
“Does sex matter so much, in the long run?” Kurt’s eyes were wide and I recalled in that moment that it had been a long time since we’d had sex. For several months after the policy change, I’d been completely uninterested. There had been a couple of furtive, silent couplings after that, and then—nothing for a long time. Was Kurt saying he was fine with that? I wasn’t.
“Kurt, of course it matters,” I spluttered.
“Fine.” He flushed. “But I just can’t accept that anyone would throw away everything that is so good in the church because they wanted more sex.”
And yet here we were, in the house of a polygamist who had been excommunicated for his sex life.
“You don’t know what it would be like to have sex without sexual attraction,” I told him, trying to speak gently so that he wouldn’t feel battered by the words that I felt like I was repeating—again. “You don’t know what celibacy for your whole adult life would be. And you certainly don’t know what it would be like to be told that your natural sexual instincts are wrong and that you have to change them in order to be acceptable to your community. Until you do a little more soul searching about that, I don’t think we can talk about this.” Why were we rehashing all of this right now? Because it hadn’t been resolved. Maybe it never would be and we both would have to accept that, but we hadn’t yet.
“But Linda, we’re not animals,” Kurt said, “We’re not just our most base needs. The natural man is an enemy to God.” He was quoting scripture at me, the surest way to end any real conversation. Play the “bishop” card and remind your wife that you are in every way considered her spiritual superior.
As I looked at my husband standing there, smelling his unique scent and feeling the warmth leaking from him, it occurred to me to feel some brief pity for Kurt. He hated this compound and all it represented. This wasn’t a good moment for him.