Well I'm Deafinately Me

Skill issue. I'm a massive butch dyke who loves women, AND I love fat fuzzy bear men in a very faggy way. Fat sweaty butch/bear sex is incredible.

If you really, genuinely, absolutely do not like men or want to date them, fine, that is perfectly allowed, but as a nonbinary bisexual, I do get very tired of the "bisexuals don't ACTUALLY like men" thing. It's just another aspect of gender essentialism and blaming random individual men for systemic patriarchy instead of working toward true liberation and gender equality.

but as I got control of my breathing after the initial stress when President Oaks started off about the family proclamation, I got a very distinct feeling that kind of said “girl you are not smarter than me. I know what I’m doing, please trust me, I’m in charge.”

(A queer also going to church)

There's been five main things.

When I was 19 years old, I prayed and asked if God could accept and love me as I was, a gay person. Immediately I felt warmth and goosebumps and I received the words "You are not broken."

While a student at BYU, I had a faith crisis but because I was at school I couldn't walk away from the church. So instead I looked around at the shards of my faith and picked out the pieces that were meaningful to me and held onto them. Things like love one another, take care of the vulnerable of society, and so on.

I learned that even if I couldn't speak up in the meeting, at a minimum I should speak to myself truths which counter the harmful things being taught. "Gay people are an enemy to God." "No, I have my own witness that God loves queer people very much and wants us to thrive."

In 2015, I was very upset at the Church's policy which required a disciplinary council of people in a gay relationship and their children wouldn't be allowed to join the church, or if they were already members, wouldn't be allowed to advance in the priesthood until age 18 at which time they'd be asked to denounce gay marriage (their parent's marriage). I got the answer that it is okay to leave this church but there's a work to do if I were to stay. So I think of it as Jesus invited me to stay, which helps a lot when others make it difficult to stay. It also means I don't have to accept everything, I can recognize the good and the troublesome parts

There's a new company in Rexburg which sells custom fortune cookies, the idea is that loved ones of Rexburg students can write a love note and have it put into a fortune cookie which is delivered to them on campus.

Lucia Ratliff, the company founder, says that there are times she has more batter than orders and it would be so much better to deliver love to someone rather than let it go to waste. She would like to use the excess batter to make cookies with love notes for the LGBTQ community on campus.

If you are queer and would like to possibly be the recipient of a random love note in a fortune cookie, or if you aren't queer but know of queer students at BYU-I, please send me a DM with the name and I'll pass along to Lucia.

Addendum: To simplify things, Lucia has created a Google form so people can submit love notes directly, which hopefully simplifies things

Y'all pardon me while I dump a bunch of important resources for afrostake. I'm basically going through my browser bookmarks of all the resources I've gathered over the years and putting them under that new hashtag.

If y'all want to reach out and help build the space, we gotta make sure people know it's safe first. And it'll be a safe space when it's an informed space.

Have a toxic relationship with your parents that is unsafe and unfixable?

Do you get violently sideswiped by I Am a Child of God or Families Can Be Together Forever, too?

I got you, fam!

My parents haven't really been parents to me since I was 12 years old. I was No Contact with my dad once he went to jail and we never reconciled before he died. I'm currently No Contact with my mom because she is a profoundly unsafe person, who now lives in a constant state of delusion and paranoia from all the drugs she has done in her life. Her refusal to get help and how badly she has treated me during her mental health crises throughout my life has destroyed our relationship. I made very deliberate choices as an adult to keep her at a safe distance from me, even before I finally went no contact.

God doesn't give everyone who has ever lived a loving and functional family. It doesn't mean he loves you less. It doesn't mean you don't matter, or you don't deserve better.

If you need some scriptures to remind yourself of that, hold onto these:

Psalm 27:10

Matthew 10:36, 12:46-50, John 7:5

Ephesians 6:4. This one is especially important if you have trauma surrounding "Honor thy Father and Mother." The mandate to follow this commandment (especially in a deferential traditional sense) is conditional on verse 4, a fact that some people like to conveniently ignore.

1 Nephi 21:15-16

You're allowed to be disappointed in your parents. God is not going to be upset with you for that. He's certainly not going to punish you for it, and being in conflict with your family is not in and of itself a divine punishment.

Take care of yourself. Know you're not alone in what you're going through. There are others at Church going through the same or similar things, even if you can't see it. And Jesus knows exactly how you feel, even in this. His family also didn't always understand or support him in who God made him to be. He existed in a state of conflict with his brothers for a season, a fact the scriptures acknowledge openly.

Why is this happening to you? Because it can happen to anyone. None of us are promised a perfect family that always gets along. Sometimes it'll have nothing to do with you and everything to do with the choices other people make to choose conflict over love, coercion over connection. That's not your fault.

Found family happens in the Church. If you need some found family, your congregation is a great place to invest in some. Tumblrstake can be a great place for it, too.

As is the way of the Lord this starts several years ago when I was on my mission, where I finally actually understood the importance of trials in our lives.

Newtons third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If we want to walk forward we need to overcome two forces: gravity, and friction.

Gravity and friction make walking difficult, BUT if we did not have those oppositions there would be no movement. If there were a room with no gravity and no friction, there would be no movement. We would just flail around and never get anywhere, much less toward our goal.

Trials are our spiritual gravity and friction. They provide the opposing force from which we push. To be perfected is a process of trial and growth, trial and growth, trial and growth. It will not be easy but it the only way we can come unto Christ and become like our Heavenly Parents.

Last conference was hard for me and I only ended up watching about half a session, though I have since read some of the talks and quite liked them. It didn't push me out of the church, but it got close. I had recently come out as gender-queer and started using they/them. It made me wonder. I had received personal revelation from the Lord that my gender identity and expression was part of my eternal identity and supported by Them, so why was the quorum of the twelve and the first presidency teaching contrary to this? My answer as typical of the Lord came from an old institute teacher who I had once spent nearly an hour arguing with about trans rights. He was substituting for the class I was in and we were talking about the organization of the church.

Ephesians 4:11-17 teaches us about the organization of the church saying:

11.And he gave some, apostles; and to some, prophets; and to some, evangelists; and to some, pastors, and teachers;

12.For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

13.Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

14.That we are henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and the cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive

15.But speaking the truth in love, may grow up unto him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

16.From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working inn the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

17.This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.

The Church is organized intentionally it is imperfect by design.

"For the perfecting of the saints," trials are the biggest perfecting force in life. So we are perfected both by good and bad experiences within the church and by good and bad experiences with the members of the church.

"In the unity of the faith," becoming unified doesn't happen on accident, a common group dynamic model identifies "storming" or a period of disagreement and struggle as a fundamental part of growing an effective team. Overcoming the struggle is what unifies us.

"Be no more children, tossed to and fro," learning to love imperfect people and finding the good in everyone helps us learn who we are and what we believe which will ground us in Christ.

"But speaking the truth in love...even Christ," Recognizing that Christ is the truth and learning to share the his gospel with love helps us and those around us grow closer to him.

“Why do people seem to think focusing on [the other thing -> I’m taking to mean “being queer” or struggle with gospel topics] means we’re not focusing on the fact that we’re also children of god?”

I think it’s because people think “children of god” equates to “focusing on God when things are hard.” To me at least, they seem to think that unless you just focus on divine things you’re not truly realizing your divine potential.

A lot of people who don’t struggle with [the other thing] don’t truly understand what it’s like to have those life experiences. They just see it as you struggling with a worldly thing and think you’re looking at it with a worldly perspective and not a personal one.

If you look at scriptures it constantly talks about turning to worldly things will take you away from the Lord. All they seem to see in people who struggle with [the other thing] is their focus on trying to understand or live through [the other thing.] They don’t see how it turns [those who struggle with the thing] turn to God. They only see those who have left the church or become hateful of the church.

I also think a lot of them also have unanswered questions that they’ve made peace with. So they don’t understand why others haven’t done the same yet (they also seem to forget the struggles it takes before they get there.) or they’ve never asked questions and think the gospel is black and white.

That’s what I believe anyway. We can’t truly know the inner workings of another man.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.