Open letter to my extended family...

Dear family,

After seeing an article in the paper indicating the mobilization of support by the LDS church to help pass Proposition 8 in California, which would ban the currently legal gay marriage, I feel it would be dishonest and irresponsible of me not to extend my thoughts on the matter. I realize many of you may not share the opinions of the LDS church on this matter, but I feel strongly that I should speak.

I'm sure you all are aware of my politics and my views on our government and social issues. I haven't been shy about them in the past. But this issue moves much beyond politics. This is personal.

I am sure you are also aware that I am one of these "gays" that the church talks about in the abstract, one of these "gays" that the politicians talk about in the abstract. But I'm also the kid and the adult you have always known. I hope that as you are pressured to view things or pressured to participate in things, such as this, you put a face to these nameless people that are treated as second-class citizens without equal rights in this country.

I know you hold your beliefs dear and I don't want to put into question your devotion to your church and religion. What I am asking you to do is to reflect on what is being asked to be done and what reason you are doing it. I realize the reason publicly made is that the LDS church, as many churches, believes in the "sanctity of marriage and that it should remain solely between a man and a woman." While I disagree with that sentiment to its very core and rank it down with past transgressions on racial divisions, gender division, and others that have plagued our society for centuries - I will not argue with you on this point.

What I want to propose is that you can maintain your beliefs in your spiritual realm and if you want to exclude me and my partner of almost nine years from your temples and your ceremonies that is fine. That is your right. But can we not agree to live independently together in this country with differing views and differing lives? I have been together monogamously, happily, and securely with my partner for almost a decade. How many of you or your children have been with their partners for less than that and yet were instantly given recognition by society and given a gambit of instantly recognized rights simply for them being married. What is being denied to me and my partner is a secure life together, keeping to ourselves, with the same securities and support that you have. A life that allows me to know that if he gets sick I will be able to visit him in the hospital - without question. Knowing that if something were to happen to either of us we don't have to have a litany of documents which secure what a marriage would do automatically. More than that we are denied legitimacy as human beings in our society. How many of you have experienced that before?

The way my partner and I are living is as if we are married. If this law in California is defeated then my partner and I will continue to live as we have been and we will continue to be very happy. If the law is California is upheld then my partner and I will continue to live as we have been except with the promise of more security - with more support - with more recognition that we are human beings with rights. I think the fundamental issue here is for you to each take a moment of reflection and contemplate beyond the rhetoric, beyond the politics, and beyond the gut level reactions and think logically. How has my life, with my partner, affected yours? Don't think in hypotheticals or "what if's" but think logically. How really has my life affected yours?

I've done the same multiple times. I would say that knowing each and every one of you and all your uniqueness has been a value in my life I could never ignore or appreciate too much. As much as I might disagree with your religion on this issue I most certainly would not support a law to suppress your views on the matter - or a law that would suppress your right to practice your religion. But when your religion, views, or practices actively support an attempt to do the same to me I must admit it makes me question all the goodness I know to come from the LDS church.

The reality is you probably feel like you have heard versions of all this before. You probably aren't hearing anything new from me. But I would hope that somehow this is different because it is from me. What I would hope you would do is try and personalize this issue and put a human face to your cause. I did not choose to be gay. I went through years of torment and confusion in which tested the very core of my being. In church, growing up, I often heard the story of Joseph Smith so disgruntled with the choices of religion and seeking truth himself. He sought that truth through very difficult circumstances and the faith he founded continued to seek its own truth through persecution and misunderstanding even after he was gone.

I'm not going to devalue the life of Joseph Smith by saying I suffered like him, but I would suggest that we all seek our own truth throughout our lives - just as he did. For some of us it is easy and it is clear. For some of us it if very difficult. For me, it was the latter. Finding my truth was the hardest thing I have ever done. For finding that truth, in which I am living, I have never been so rewarded. I like to think the harder it is to find our truth the larger the reward will be in the end.

I have to be honest here and assume that what you find to be truth might conflict with what I found to be my own truth. With that all I would then argue is that truth might just be relative to each individual that seeks it. If we can agree on that statement then I would ask why does one's truth deserve to get legal, constitutional, or even spiritual rights over another when they can sufficiently live separately and equally within the same realm? Again, what has my family done to affect your family? I'd have to imagine nothing. Why would then, your family, have the right to affect mine?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. Please think of me and the so many others out there like me in your efforts this November.