I have visited Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City every winter to see the buildings and trees lit up for the holidays – and I promise it’s the most beautiful sight you’ll ever see. They won’t turn on the lights for another 21 days, but I would have given anything to have been there tonight.
Let me explain.
In a week when much of the country is celebrating monumental progressive victories, I feel nothing but the constant shame of knowing how much money and manpower the Mormon Church and residents of Utah have poured into the passage of California’s Proposition 8.
I’m 26, gay, and from Salt Lake City… To say the fight over Prop 8 – and the other three anti-gay ballot measures that were enacted into law this week – is personal is one hell of an understatement.
I’m used to watching progressive victories from the sidelines. It’s always been hard to reconcile the thriving liberal oasis of Salt Lake City and Park City with the rest of our ultra-conservative surroundings. I’m all too used to the long arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that extends into every aspect of life in Utah – as well as into your psyche.
I need to apologize – to every couple in California whose marriages hang in the balance; to every closeted gay kid in Utah who is even more terrified than before – on behalf of Utah itself. It rips me up that my heritage has suddenly turned so dark – but the gathering rage of the last few days has given me a new, first glimpse of hope.
So how dare they! How dare they take on a fight AGAINST equality – and do so in the name of faith and religion and marriage and values. How dare they defile the love I hope to one day celebrate at my own wedding. How dare they twist my mother’s spirituality – which has always been the bedrock of our family – into something hurtful.
I envy my mom’s faith sometimes – I wish I could be so sure of things. Which brings me to this week. As I have watched the outpouring of support for LGBT equality – the righteous rage evident in protests throughout California to the countless blog posts America Blog and Daily Kos – I have been made sure again. Sure of the goodness of humanity and the great potential America.
It has made me finally confront what I’ve been so studiously ignoring these past few months: my own sense of responsibility – as a Utahn – for this hateful mess.
I remember all too clearly the day I heard that Canada had legalized gay marriage and I realized in an instant that I had never let myself dream or even hope for such a thing in my own country. It was like the world shifted out from under me and I could breathe for the first time and it was too good to be true.
I believe that I will see marriage legalized throughout the United States in my lifetime – just not yet. It’s almost unbelievable to be typing those words, to be honest. But as we fight until we reach that day, I am equally aware that there will be moments of reckoning. This is one of them. My children – those grandkids my mom can’t wait to meet – will ask us how such things could happen, how times could ever have been so dark. And in the wake of the devastating passage of Proposition 8 in California, they will ask me what I did to stop it.
My answer cannot be “nothing.”
So now it’s our turn. Tonight, there was a protest in front of the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City. They were expecting maybe 100 people at best… But over 3,000 Utahns turned out to show their support for LGBTQ equality.
I’ve spent every winter of my life looking up at the lights of those trees. But I would trade a lifetime of Christmases to have been there tonight to protest the role of the Mormon Church in passing Prop 8. I would give anything to have been there standing with my friends and family to prove to America – and if I’m honest, to prove to ourselves – that not all of us are agents of intolerance.
That even on this darkest of nights – and even in Salt Lake City, Utah – love and hope and justice and equality can shine brighter than the lights of any Temple on earth.
Crossposted at www.amplifyyourvoice.org