Parental Affection Must Transcend Institutional Concerns / Lloyd

Recently a friend asked if a Facebook posting might not be part of a preface to an Abbott Family Chronicle. It wasn’t and I referred him to She Says, He Says to find our thoughts and experiences organized by subject matter. A quick review of our blog, however,  revealed a hodgepodge organized only by posting date.

To rectify the tangle I gave each post a subject label and built a first cut index that readers can see as a pop-up on the right edge of the screen.  In that process I took time to read, scan and cull the 334 posts that started in Oct 2008 when we began our blog, and to a degree I relived our documented challenges and concerns.

observations

As a result of that review and reliving I have several observations and three questions.

1. Our struggle with California Proposition 8 for me converted a lifetime of close interrelations with gays and lesbians to an uncomfortable institutional confrontation between Mormons and the LGBT community.
2. As I worked through my theological framework since 2008 I've became more convinced than ever that a samesex relationship is absolutely at odds with an eternal family pattern, wherein Heavenly Parents (a male and a female) conceive us spiritually and earthly parents provide mortal, physical bodies for our spirits.
3. That physical chain began on earth with the conception of our first parents Adam & Eve. They were born to immortal parents and raised in a family setting until they were joined in marriage and given the opportunity to transgress God’s commandment. Through transgression, Adam & Eve gained the ability to conceive children of their own within a mortal setting.
4. So much more than resurrection and immortality, eternal life is the state of married men and women with immortal, physical bodies. With these immortal, physical bodies husbands and wives continue the conception of spiritual beings within a family setting. Immortal parents then provide those children a mortal experience to acquire physical bodies of their own and eventually live in an expanding eternal family.
5. Consistent with this theological understanding, I find the fundamental gay and lesbian variance to this eternal pattern truly overwhelming.
6. And I’m amazed at the many gay and lesbian children I’ve encountered in the Mormon community.
7. I’ve been even more amazed and dismayed at the knee jerk shunning and ostracizing of these gay and lesbian children born in the covenant within our religious community that throws them into the hungry and waiting arms of the most tragic and harmful elements of society.

questions

Now the questions:  

1. Why is this great Mormon Community finding it so difficult to put aside the institutional concerns and encircle our gay and lesbian members, especially our own children, in an interpersonal embrace that heals wounds and provides these family members optimum mortal development?
2. Is our theology so narrow that we can’t recognize the value and potential for contribution of family members whether or not they are interested in or bound toward eternal family life?
3. Can we admit to no common ground within a current family relationship whether or not a family member is in full Church fellowship?

perspective

I have been working with men and women in violation of the doctrine and principles that lead to eternal life since my mission in 1964. Actually, since I began home teaching with my father when I was a teacher and a priest. He showed me it was possible to engage members, and men and women generally, in interpersonal relationships of respect and service. He showed me it wasn’t my place to be judgemental or punitive.  He was absolutely realistic of what was, but he never let that get in his way of extending a caring outreach. And he accepted rejection without rancor.

Every day I work professionally in a maximum security setting to provide wellness and recovery support to incarcerated men who have broken every commandment. And with the fewest possible exceptions, mostly among the seriously mentally ill who are yet to stabilize on medications,  we have found common ground for safe, respectful, and productive relationships.

I’m not so naive to ignore the importance to safety of the highly structured security measures in place. However, I’m still surprised at the caring stability that can be achieved even with the men who were most dangerous and destructive when they lived outside of security. And actually, the goal and reality is that the majority of these men will eventually be released to the community.

Therefore, I really don’t understand our own people that seem so ready to jettison their own children who are caught in such an anomalous disconnect with eternity. How can we cut them off, those little children we ourselves conceived and bore with such hope and love, waiting for the institution to get things sorted out?