While I seemed to be succeeding in church work even in loving my children I was thrown into confusion about how to earn a living. Maybe I wanted things to be easier. I had wonderful employment positions through CETA, a government program, however they only lasted until the government grant lasted. Then I was unemployed once again.
I was referred to Utah State Rehabilitation Services. I don't want to blame President Kimball but he had told me not to work with the cub scouts, not to work in the arts ( My degree was in Fine Arts) and separate myself from other homosexuals. Contrary to popular opinion there didn't seem to be anywhere in Salt Lake City or Utah that I didn't bump into a homosexual in the work place.
At this time I was experiencing self doubt, self confusion and I am O.K. one day and I am not O.K. the next day. I was returning to the same threshold I experienced at B.Y.U. I thought I could change my feelings, my homosexual feeling. I was fighting inside myself every day. The vocational rehabilitation counselor administered testing ( mental, vocational and technical ) to see if I could qualify for further educational funds, counseling and other employment benefits offered by his offices.
Eventually through hours of counseling my homosexuality became known to him. Because Homosexuality was considered a mental illness until the American Psychiatric Association said it was not the counselor wanted to prove to his supervisors that I was truly homosexual and nothing I could do could change my behavior. In that vain I was sent by the State of Utah Rehabilitation Services, expenses paid, to Dr. Robert Card. I refer to this therapy in my journal February 4, 1976,
" Through aversion shock therapy I am trying to retrain my mind to adhere to the heterosexual principles that I am suppose to espouse. "
April 3, 1976 - Saturday - " I enjoy being in the Church but feel like a foreigner within, not a fellow citizen. I think of the tests I took at Vocational Rehabilitation. I am starting to exhibit asocial behavior with outbursts of anger then crying. I am so overwhelmed with my attraction to men...."
In the processes of aversion shock therapy I would be watching pornographic movies receive a shock to my forearm and leave the offices of Dr.Card in extreme sexual distress. I believe it was at this juncture I began to feel trapped in my marriage.
The marriage lost any sense of eternalness. I think it became a sorrow for both of us. Not only did we have all the disputes that all normal marriages contain. There was a fully functioning homosexual married to a fully functioning heterosexual. What was President Kimball thinking to counsel homosexuals to marry heterosexuals. Did he truly have grasp of the situation. Did he present this before the God of Heaven and receive this answer?
The Tabernacle Choir was taking me to the American Bicentennial. These are a composite of my journal entries.
" We arrived in Philadelphia on June 28th l976. Breck and I walked through the city to the liberty bell which I touched several times. Went through Independence Hall.
In the evening we walked over to the Academy of Music...... ( oldest concert hall in the new world ) Eugene Ormandy worked with the Choir and Orchestra. On June 29th we went to Robin Hood Dell to rehearse. Museum of Art all afternoon. Evening concert with the Philadelphia Philharmonic at Robin Hood Dell 20,000 people. We took the Amtrak train to Boston for a concert. It was a beautiful ride along the shore. Flew to New York City .. rehearsal in Carnegie Hall then later a good concert. A black couple in the front row who I got to know asked me to sign their program ... Amtrak to Washington D.C. July 3rd President Kimball spoke to us at the Washington Temple... Kennedy Center rehearsal O.J. Simpson, Bob Hope, Art Linkletter, Annette Funicello, and Tony Savales...."
One of the highlights of the trip occurred when the left over trumpeters from the Nixon years still used by the Ford Administration were positioned on every tier of the John Philip Sousa Hall in the Kennedy Center. Before the Tabernacle Choir concert began they played a trumpet fanfare for the arrival of President Ford and President Kimball entering the Presidential Box. I don't know what they played but I thought I was at the second Coming of the Savior.
Our last concert was in the Capitol Center July 4th where we sang to 80,000 people for the weekly broadcast. We were disappointed not to see the largest display of fireworks in the United States history but President Kimball who flew on our plane had received a bomb threat ( rumor ) so off we went on a 6 hour flight back to Salt Lake City.
In the weeks ahead I got involved with a ultra-conservative educational school Mount Vernon Academy. I was teaching art and some elementary courses. The work and the staffing seemed to get me on course again to enjoy the company of the saints. I invited one of the members of the Tabernacle Choir to speak to the students. She was from East Germany and had gone through great odds to get to freedom.
The school could not pay me anything for teaching, rather needed us to volunteer. I could not do that so I took my leave. It was a further discouragement. Here is my journal entry relating that disappointment.
October 7, 1976 - " Thursday - ...I feel I've done all I can, now I meet failure at what I love best. My students in the 5th and 6th grade that I've taught I will miss greatly. Now where will I find a job. Lord you can't expect much more. I'm tired. I desire to begin again. "
Looking over my journal entries I gathered this composite summary - October 1976.
" I'm in and out of jobs. Trying to stay worthy enough to remain in the choir, love my wife and children and then once a week I go to Dr. Card. I sit in the hot seat with a mercury tube device around the shaft of my penis. Here come the porno movies. Gay/Straight doesn't matter I'm watching the men. Dr. Frankenstein is back of me registering my excitement levels. He always remarks that I am a difficult client as my levels were always up there so he jams on the electric shock. He says my wife is suppose to be there next to me so when I'm finished I can get it on with her. Maybe it was working for him. What the hell was I doing. Ever go to a Tabernacle choir rehearsal after seeing a hours worth of pornography? Tis a puzzlement!
Well it might of worked on the sex offenders he dealt with in the prison system, for after all that might be a way out of prosecution or incarceration. There were other of his clients caught in bathrooms masturbating. Yeah They're cured. But I am not there because I do any of that behavior nor do I have to be there. I'm there to prove to the State of Utah that I am homosexual so I can be eligible for vocational rehabilitation funds. This did not make sense to me.
At my last session I showed Dr. Card my arm. It looked like a piece of hamburger. There were numerous one inch cuts in my arm. I say therapy is over. As I exhibited my arm to the vocational counselors I am eligible and I guess uncured. Maybe I've started a whole new group of people, the uncured. "
I believe to this day that something happened in that therapy which added to the rage in me which would get me in repeated trouble from that time forward in my life. What I want to say about the time I spent with this therapy and Dr. Card to me seems humorous but if printed would be in poor taste.
February 21,1977- " Monday- Brown Floral may not be so bad a place to work. I would have enjoyed going to the Temple with the Pitkins but I had to work or not eat. I feel much like the agnostic I was thirteen years ago this month. For not having been able to be blessed with a job to supply my family with the necessities. I'm far from feeling close to God. I regret the whole hypocrisy of my existence. I pity my children for I am a failure. I feel like I've failed them. I don't care how up in my spirits I get I'll never forget this forsaken feeling. I wish I never met the missionaries. I regret my whole life and people make me vomit..." That was a rough day!
April 4, 1977- " Monday - General Conference was good. Hosannah Shout Anthem ( Hymn used at Temple dedications ) ...I was shaking after we sang ....I cried during the prayer and many wept around me..." Special thing: a terrarium with a small gloxinia and a violet for my wife."
April 30, 1977- Saturday -" ...work at Brown Floral. Trying to set up a meeting with my wife's brother who is gay..don't know if he will be able to come around .. must try to open his mind to the pitfalls of gay life. Just who do I think I am, the cured? "
It seems in 1977, I who had the most to overcome had the most advice. Often I found that many times men who are homophobic have some phase of homosexuality to work through.
May 26,1977- Thursday -".....Choir rehearsal.. Breck and I visited.... he said he was me. I was he.
Then he said he could kill me and end all his problems..." Ah sweet mysteries of life!