Queer Gnosis

by Troy Williams
originally printed in the Salt Lake Tribune, July 15, 2007


Despite Mitt Romney’s passionate
efforts to denounce polygamy and demonstrate his devotion to Jesus
Christ, his Mormon faith remains subject to vicious campaign attacks.

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has also come
under harsh public scrutiny as it has once again been forced to prove
that it is, indeed, Christian and not some strange cow-mutilating
satanic cult.

    With all of the political ugliness, I thought maybe Romney and
his fellow Saints might benefit from my unsolicited "queer eye"
perspective on the situation. And though I don’t have skills in
interior design, fashion or culinary arts, I do understand bigotry.
Many protesters who shout, "God hates fags" most certainly believe that
"God hates Mormons" as well.
    I write this from the perspective of a gay Mormon. I was born
and raised in the faith, served a mission and eventually left the
church to live an authentic life congruent with my sexuality. But,
nonetheless, Mormonism is my heritage.
    The early Latter-day Saints took pride in being a "peculiar"
people who were ostracized and driven across frontier America. This was
due in part to their commitment to a counter-culture lifestyle.
Polygamy was a relic of barbarism and newspapers reviled such families
as a threat to traditional American values. Sound familiar?
    Ironically, my Mormon heritage taught me how to stand strong
when people say horrible things about gays – and to stand taller when
those same people vote against my civil liberties.
    What, then, can a queer teach a Saint? First, you will never
win over people who hate you on their terms. My gender-bending friend,
Mattilda, recently laid it out for me: "The Christian right doesn’t
care if you are a nice, smiling, gay person like Rosie O’Donnell or if
you’re a transgender hooker. To them, we are all the same." And
likewise you Saints.

    Raging Mormonphobes will never accept you, either. You can be
Donny Osmond or Warren Jeffs and they will still believe that you
belong to the same satanic cult. The best public relations firm in the
world won’t make the Evangelicals love you. Sacrificing your core
identity to pass in mainstream America will always fail.

     Celebrate the fact that you are a biblically identified "peculiar people" and go big! Normal is overrated anyhow.

    With that, be humble. You can’t complain when people don’t
believe you are Christian if you teach that all other Christian faiths
are apostate. That never goes over well at interfaith functions. And
remember, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."

    If you continually attack the LGBT community, then karma will
eventually come back around to bite. Nobody likes a bully. And Mormons,
of all people, know what it’s like to be a persecuted minority.
Imagine, instead, if the Latter-day Saints were to rally to the defense
of the poor, marginalized and oppressed – wow. You could so change the
world.


   
I like to think that Joseph Smith would have been cool with
the queers. He, too, lived on the fringe of respectable society. And,
like Mitt, he loved this country enough to run for president.

   
I love our country, too. In grade school I stood daily before
the flag, hand over heart, as a queer Mormon American to pledge " with
liberty and justice for all." That phrase still inspires me today.

   
Liberty and justice is the promise to Mormons, gays and every
peculiar queer misfit who loves this nation. We don’t have to be the
same to protect one another’s freedom. We can all be beautiful,
patriotic oddballs.

    I will gladly stand up and defend Mormon civil liberties. Will you stand in defense of mine?

by Troy Williams
originally printed in the Salt Lake Tribune, July 15, 2007


Despite Mitt Romney’s passionate
efforts to denounce polygamy and demonstrate his devotion to Jesus
Christ, his Mormon faith remains subject to vicious campaign attacks.

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has also come
under harsh public scrutiny as it has once again been forced to prove
that it is, indeed, Christian and not some strange cow-mutilating
satanic cult.

    With all of the political ugliness, I thought maybe Romney and
his fellow Saints might benefit from my unsolicited "queer eye"
perspective on the situation. And though I don’t have skills in
interior design, fashion or culinary arts, I do understand bigotry.
Many protesters who shout, "God hates fags" most certainly believe that
"God hates Mormons" as well.
    I write this from the perspective of a gay Mormon. I was born
and raised in the faith, served a mission and eventually left the
church to live an authentic life congruent with my sexuality. But,
nonetheless, Mormonism is my heritage.
    The early Latter-day Saints took pride in being a "peculiar"
people who were ostracized and driven across frontier America. This was
due in part to their commitment to a counter-culture lifestyle.
Polygamy was a relic of barbarism and newspapers reviled such families
as a threat to traditional American values. Sound familiar?
    Ironically, my Mormon heritage taught me how to stand strong
when people say horrible things about gays – and to stand taller when
those same people vote against my civil liberties.
    What, then, can a queer teach a Saint? First, you will never
win over people who hate you on their terms. My gender-bending friend,
Mattilda, recently laid it out for me: "The Christian right doesn’t
care if you are a nice, smiling, gay person like Rosie O’Donnell or if
you’re a transgender hooker. To them, we are all the same." And
likewise you Saints.

    Raging Mormonphobes will never accept you, either. You can be
Donny Osmond or Warren Jeffs and they will still believe that you
belong to the same satanic cult. The best public relations firm in the
world won’t make the Evangelicals love you. Sacrificing your core
identity to pass in mainstream America will always fail.

     Celebrate the fact that you are a biblically identified "peculiar people" and go big! Normal is overrated anyhow.

    With that, be humble. You can’t complain when people don’t
believe you are Christian if you teach that all other Christian faiths
are apostate. That never goes over well at interfaith functions. And
remember, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."

    If you continually attack the LGBT community, then karma will
eventually come back around to bite. Nobody likes a bully. And Mormons,
of all people, know what it’s like to be a persecuted minority.
Imagine, instead, if the Latter-day Saints were to rally to the defense
of the poor, marginalized and oppressed – wow. You could so change the
world.


   
I like to think that Joseph Smith would have been cool with
the queers. He, too, lived on the fringe of respectable society. And,
like Mitt, he loved this country enough to run for president.

   
I love our country, too. In grade school I stood daily before
the flag, hand over heart, as a queer Mormon American to pledge " with
liberty and justice for all." That phrase still inspires me today.

   
Liberty and justice is the promise to Mormons, gays and every
peculiar queer misfit who loves this nation. We don’t have to be the
same to protect one another’s freedom. We can all be beautiful,
patriotic oddballs.

    I will gladly stand up and defend Mormon civil liberties. Will you stand in defense of mine?

Interviewed by Troy Williams

One of the most provocative contemporary queer authors has to be Mattilda: AKA Matt Bernstein Sycamore.  She describes herself as a “genderqueer faggot queen, somewhere in the genderblur trans continuum”.  Her books are subversive, thought provoking and fantastically hazardous to the heterosexist status quo.  Hur new anthology, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender Conformity confronts the messy crossroads of identity and ill-fitting social categories.    In part one we discuss the dangers of gay assimilation.  In part two we’ll discuss Nobody Passes. 

TW: My first exposure to your writing was when my boss handed me your article, “Sweatshop Produced Rainbow Flags”. And it was one of those moments that fundamentally shifted how I would approach my own activism. I’d like to start with why you feel the gay rights movement is a sham.

M: Basically the gay rights movement has become a screen behind which to hide and oppress everyone else and get away with it. Instead of building community for people on the margins, (queers of color, disabled queers, queer activists, transqueers, sex workers, homeless queers) the mainstream gay rights movement is more about policing the borders and deciding who belongs inside and who belongs outside.  If we take a look at the priorities of the mainstream gay rights movement we see things like marriage, military service, adoption and ordination into the priesthood.  All the dominant signs of straight conformity have suddenly become the ultimate signs of gay success.  And so in that sense it’s become more about assimilation into the dominant culture and taking on all the most violent signs of straight privilege, instead of challenging power. 

TW:  Yeah.  I don’t have any patience for the military agenda of the LGBT political movement.

M: Even now we can see articles that say, “President Carter doesn’t support Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — and this is like an exciting mark of progress.  The fascinating thing to me is that the whole notion of gays in the military is able to exist separately from US colonial wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.  You can even hear people say, ‘Oh I’m against that war, but I think gay people should be able to serve in the military just like straight people!’  And it’s that fundamental contradiction.  If you are against the war, then no one should serve!  It’s pretty simple.

TW: My slogan is: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Kill’.

M: (laughs.) That sounds perfect. 

TW:  But I’ve got my own set of internal contradictions.  I see the problem with marriage as a dominator template that reinforces patriarchy — but when my conservative uncle, or George Bush or the Mormon Church start working against gay marriage, I come rushing to its defense.  So I find myself wearing different masks when I’m with different audiences.

M: (laughs) Well obviously the Christian Right exists. They have a lot of power, including the presidency.  And it is crucial to fight the Christian Right.  But we need to fight them on our terms and not theirs.  So much of the gay marriage movement is ‘oh please accept us on your terms!’  So much of it becomes, ‘how do we convince raging homophobes that we are just like them?’

TW:  We join the army!

M:  Exactly.  Actually we like to join the army more than you do!  We actually enjoy killing Iraqis more than you do!   We actually have long-term monogamous relationships that imitate your relationships to such an extent that you can’t even tell the difference! 

TW: Right.

M: But guess what?  The Christian Right is always going to be able to tell the difference.  And they don’t care if you are a nice smiling gay person like Rosie O’Donnell – or if you’re a transgender hooker.  To them we are all the same.  So much of the gay establishment media is about the ‘we’re just like you’ message and I think that is always going to fail.  That is what’s so sad about the ‘normalcy at any cost’ model.  No one fits into that.  We shouldn’t be trying to have our place inside imperialism or inside marriage or any of these horrifying institutions. 

TW: Could it be argued that the marriage movement is working incrementally?  We’ll take care of the respectable gays first and then…

M: That’s the argument.  First we’ll get marriage, first we’ll get military service, first we’ll get adoption and then everything else comes after.  And I don’t think there is a single historical example of when that actually happened.  But I also think that if we look at organizations like HRC or the Log Cabin Republicans – groups like that have more in common with the NRA then any left agenda.  So what are we going to get next — gun rights? 

TW:  Oh we’ve got those here in Utah!  We’ve got a man who is insisting that the young kids can take weapons into the queer prom.

M: (laughs)

TW: How do you personally negotiate your own activism between being heard and not being so fringe that people completely dismiss your message?

M: I don’t feel like what I am saying is actually fringe.  It’s been made fringe.  Especially the really basic arguments. Instead of having access to marriage, people should have universal access to all the services that marriage can procure.  Things like housing and healthcare and the benefits now procured through citizenship.  Those should be things that we all have access to.  People get that.  And that is the tragedy of gay marriage, because it replaces the struggle for larger things.  The most dramatic for me is universal healthcare.  In the early 90’s universal healthcare was a mainstream gay issue because people had seen their entire circles of friends die of AIDS. And to see the dramatic shift to gays in the military and from there to marriage – it’s so obvious how these issues have replaced universal healthcare and AIDS services or domestic violence prevention.  That’s just basic reformist agenda – that’s not dismantling the system and creating something else (which I’d also be in favor of!).

To be continued…

Qcast "Passing with Mattilda" (complete interview) here:
Passing with Mattilda (26:00 min.)

Interviewed by Troy Williams

One of the most provocative contemporary queer authors has to be Mattilda: AKA Matt Bernstein Sycamore.  She describes herself as a “genderqueer faggot queen, somewhere in the genderblur trans continuum”.  Her books are subversive, thought provoking and fantastically hazardous to the heterosexist status quo.  Hur new anthology, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender Conformity confronts the messy crossroads of identity and ill-fitting social categories.    In part one we discuss the dangers of gay assimilation.  In part two we’ll discuss Nobody Passes. 

TW: My first exposure to your writing was when my boss handed me your article, “Sweatshop Produced Rainbow Flags”. And it was one of those moments that fundamentally shifted how I would approach my own activism. I’d like to start with why you feel the gay rights movement is a sham.

M: Basically the gay rights movement has become a screen behind which to hide and oppress everyone else and get away with it. Instead of building community for people on the margins, (queers of color, disabled queers, queer activists, transqueers, sex workers, homeless queers) the mainstream gay rights movement is more about policing the borders and deciding who belongs inside and who belongs outside.  If we take a look at the priorities of the mainstream gay rights movement we see things like marriage, military service, adoption and ordination into the priesthood.  All the dominant signs of straight conformity have suddenly become the ultimate signs of gay success.  And so in that sense it’s become more about assimilation into the dominant culture and taking on all the most violent signs of straight privilege, instead of challenging power. 

TW:  Yeah.  I don’t have any patience for the military agenda of the LGBT political movement.

M: Even now we can see articles that say, “President Carter doesn’t support Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — and this is like an exciting mark of progress.  The fascinating thing to me is that the whole notion of gays in the military is able to exist separately from US colonial wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.  You can even hear people say, ‘Oh I’m against that war, but I think gay people should be able to serve in the military just like straight people!’  And it’s that fundamental contradiction.  If you are against the war, then no one should serve!  It’s pretty simple.

TW: My slogan is: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Kill’.

M: (laughs.) That sounds perfect. 

TW:  But I’ve got my own set of internal contradictions.  I see the problem with marriage as a dominator template that reinforces patriarchy — but when my conservative uncle, or George Bush or the Mormon Church start working against gay marriage, I come rushing to its defense.  So I find myself wearing different masks when I’m with different audiences.

M: (laughs) Well obviously the Christian Right exists. They have a lot of power, including the presidency.  And it is crucial to fight the Christian Right.  But we need to fight them on our terms and not theirs.  So much of the gay marriage movement is ‘oh please accept us on your terms!’  So much of it becomes, ‘how do we convince raging homophobes that we are just like them?’

TW:  We join the army!

M:  Exactly.  Actually we like to join the army more than you do!  We actually enjoy killing Iraqis more than you do!   We actually have long-term monogamous relationships that imitate your relationships to such an extent that you can’t even tell the difference! 

TW: Right.

M: But guess what?  The Christian Right is always going to be able to tell the difference.  And they don’t care if you are a nice smiling gay person like Rosie O’Donnell – or if you’re a transgender hooker.  To them we are all the same.  So much of the gay establishment media is about the ‘we’re just like you’ message and I think that is always going to fail.  That is what’s so sad about the ‘normalcy at any cost’ model.  No one fits into that.  We shouldn’t be trying to have our place inside imperialism or inside marriage or any of these horrifying institutions. 

TW: Could it be argued that the marriage movement is working incrementally?  We’ll take care of the respectable gays first and then…

M: That’s the argument.  First we’ll get marriage, first we’ll get military service, first we’ll get adoption and then everything else comes after.  And I don’t think there is a single historical example of when that actually happened.  But I also think that if we look at organizations like HRC or the Log Cabin Republicans – groups like that have more in common with the NRA then any left agenda.  So what are we going to get next — gun rights? 

TW:  Oh we’ve got those here in Utah!  We’ve got a man who is insisting that the young kids can take weapons into the queer prom.

M: (laughs)

TW: How do you personally negotiate your own activism between being heard and not being so fringe that people completely dismiss your message?

M: I don’t feel like what I am saying is actually fringe.  It’s been made fringe.  Especially the really basic arguments. Instead of having access to marriage, people should have universal access to all the services that marriage can procure.  Things like housing and healthcare and the benefits now procured through citizenship.  Those should be things that we all have access to.  People get that.  And that is the tragedy of gay marriage, because it replaces the struggle for larger things.  The most dramatic for me is universal healthcare.  In the early 90’s universal healthcare was a mainstream gay issue because people had seen their entire circles of friends die of AIDS. And to see the dramatic shift to gays in the military and from there to marriage – it’s so obvious how these issues have replaced universal healthcare and AIDS services or domestic violence prevention.  That’s just basic reformist agenda – that’s not dismantling the system and creating something else (which I’d also be in favor of!).

To be continued…

Qcast "Passing with Mattilda" (complete interview) here:
Passing with Mattilda (26:00 min.)