It was useless to promise that I would never do anything like this again, so I was silent. I listened to the sounds of the hospital. Beeping, swishing, dripping medication. Squeaky shoes and squeaky wheels outside my room. Life. My life. And Kurt was still with me, despite it all.
“You’ve talked to Kenneth and Naomi about their plan to adopt Talitha?” I asked, aware that I was changing the subject.
“Yes,” Kurt said.
So that was done, and Kurt looked happy about it. Good. There would probably be a strain for a long time between father and son, because of Kenneth leaving the Mormon church, but I had hope that it would heal, in time.
“You know, while you were gone, I spent a lot of time thinking about the policy,” said Kurt.
I widened my eyes at this. I hadn’t thought the hospital would be the ideal place for a discussion of this depth, but on the other hand, if Kurt was willing to bring up the topic again, maybe I could at least listen.
“I never intended to imply that I would pressure Samuel to marry a woman. I know how hard that was on you, with your—uh, Ben,” he said. Kurt still didn’t like to talk about Ben Tookey as my first husband.
“Samuel always wants to please you. You have to be careful about what you hint at with him. He can be very sensitive,” I said gently.
Kurt rubbed at his hair. One of these days, he was going to go completely bald and then what would he do when he was thinking? Rub his eyebrows instead?
“I only want him to be happy. I want for him what I want for all my sons. I want for him what I have for myself.” He looked me in the eyes and I felt a warmth spread through me at what he was saying. He was happy with me. Or he had been, before the new policy had gotten in the way.
“I know, but it’s different for Samuel.”
“I can’t see the church suddenly changing its doctrine,” he said, his lips twisting glumly. “It’s too deep. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, the temple ceremonies, they’re all based on the idea of opposite sex marriage and complementarity between husband and wife. I don’t see how it can work with husband and husband.”
I thought about how the church had struggled to change doctrine when the revelation about blacks and the priesthood had come in 1978. Nearly forty years later, and God was still always depicted as white and The Book of Mormon still hinted that white skin was better than dark skin, even after some changes to the text. “I don’t know either,” I said.
Kurt looked at me, holding my gaze with his warm eyes. “I don’t want Samuel to think he’s lesser in any way. I don’t want him to think that he has to die in order to be made into something that can be allowed in the kingdom. I can’t bear the thought of anyone believing that.”
I let out a long, slow breath. Why couldn’t we have had this conversation months ago? I guess maybe it took this long for Kurt to see all the implications of the policy. He hadn’t been thinking about us having a gay son for nearly as long as I had. He hadn’t been thinking about LGBTQ issues since before we were married like I had, either.
“You can start by doing something in the ward. Something better than that talk last month,” I suggested.
“Like what?” asked Kurt. “I’m trying to be sensitive. Tell me what you think I can do that will be supportive of our son and not end up with me being released as bishop and possibly excommunicated.”
I hadn’t ever asked him to do something that would end like that. I just wanted understanding. “You could wear a rainbow ribbon,” I said.
He flinched. It took me a moment to figure out why. Some people might think wearing the ribbon was a protest. So I said, “Not to show you’re trying to get the apostles to change the policy, but just to show people that you’re a safe place, that they can talk to you if they have questions or just need someone to listen without judging them.”
Kurt considered this for a long moment. “I’m not interested in protesting anything. I love the church. I love the brethren. I truly believe that they are doing the best they can for everyone. Until God gives them new revelation, they have to do the best they can, and the policy was supposed—”
I held up my hand. I couldn’t hear his defense of it again. “Please,” I said, “Can we just go back to the loving part? You love the church. You love Samuel. You love me. You’re trying to love people as Christ would, right?”
He nodded. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“Maybe neither of us knows what it really means to love as Christ would. But let’s both try a little harder to find out.” I certainly hadn’t shown myself to be an expert at listening to the spirit of God when it came to Stephen Carter’s family. I’d gotten so many things wrong because of my own prejudices and expectations. I was willing to accept that other people got things wrong, too.