The Paradoxes and Ambiguities of ‘Gay’ and ‘Mormon’ (Original V…
Michael McLeod
The Paradoxes and Ambiguities of ‘Gay’ and ‘Mormon’ (Original Version)
My Journey to Embracing My Sexuality
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24 min read
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Dec 21, 2019
This is the original version of an essay I wrote in January 2019. An edited and abbreviated version was published in Human Parts that November. The editing process naturally (and rightly) reworked and shortened the piece to suit editorial guidelines. But I want to save this version for the record too: it is raw, it is me and it preserves a seminal moment in my life.
I’ve often sensed that being gay is to experience tremoring contradictions. It shouldn’t be that way, but modern humanity is so reliant on old norms that homosexuality is a sort of contrarianism, an inherently different way of being. It is at the nexus of faith and lived experience that homosexuality is most agonizingly destabilizing.
I have lived and still live and will likely always live at that nexus, which in my case is the tension between my Mormon faith and my gay identity. I have had to learn to tolerate paradox and ambiguity. My journey to admitting, accepting, embracing and now celebrating my sexuality has been complicated and — at times — tortuous, because ‘Mormon’ and ‘gay’ do not coexist well.
My journey, like those of many other gay Mormons, exposes fault lines in Mormonism that the Church of Jesus Christ of…
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Posted Mar 2, 2025
This is the original version of an essay I wrote in January 2019. An edited and abbreviated version was published in Human Parts that November. The editing pro…
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