I was transferred to Missoula, Montana by train through the mountains. It was exciting to curve through the canyons, sometimes plowing the tracks of snow and watching small avalanches cascade to the valley floor.
The members of the Church were very cold toward the missionaries when I arrived in Missoula because of some unknown incident to me concerning previous missionaries.
One of the members was very special, Sister Clearborn. To me she was the ideal mother. She and her husband invited us for meals and did all they could to steer investigators to us. We taught lessons, went tracting in 40 below weather. We sang solos, bore testimonies, and some choice members warmed up to us giving us some leads on people to teach.
While in Missoula I was again the zone leaders companion and working with an assortment of other missionaries. When I met a certain Elder Carter who was quiet, artistic, and sensitive my months of celibacy caught up with me. I must have thought I was in a classic romance movie. I made my feelings of admiration known to him.
This information got back to the President of the mission. Subsequently I was summoned to the mission home, express train. I felt like I was in big trouble. When I arrived the President wasn't there, but I was transferred to Rock Springs, Wyoming. It was a place of little beauty and very hot.
Elder Mace was at the airport to greet me into this land of dust, cedars, and rock. My goal had been to be instrumental in baptizing a total of at least 24 people into the church one for each month I was on my mission. It was here in my last area that I saw that dream fulfilled.
I don't remember getting along with anyone there especially Elder Mace. In the last month of my mission I did not want to be on a mission. There was a new mission President who I am sure knew my homosexual status. He and his wife treated me well. I lapsed into a serious depression not wanting to complete the mission.
I would soon be on my way to Brigham Young University but first I had to be release from my mission as an identified homosexual from then Apostle Spencer W. Kimball. I knew one of the lady missionaries who had taught me lived in Salt Lake City so I called her upon my arrival and she provided me with transportation while in the city.
As I made my way to Apostle Kimball's office I climbed up the granite steps entering the main corridor of the old Greek Revival Administration Building. I asked the security personnel where Apostle Kimball's office was located. His secretary had me wait in the reception room near her desk. I thought everyone acted a little odd toward me whenever I mentioned I was going to Elder Kimball's office as though they knew something I did not know.
I remember shaking hands with this grandfatherly person who spoke with a raspy voice, a result of surgery for throat cancer. I remembered hearing him speaking jokingly in a conference talk that he had fallen in the hands of " cut throats " ( surgeons ) while in New York City. I knew he had a sense of humor. He asked simple questions about my family and my mission. He said, " tell me how someone as nice as you got involved with the problem ? " He told me that " I did not look like a homosexual. "
Elder Kimball then counseled me not to be taught by Satan. I was instructed to be careful not to look at my genitals, nor other men's genitals in shower rooms or bathroom stalls. He counseled that if I were normal ( physically ) I should be able to marry and have children to change my homosexual feelings for heterosexual ones.
Apostle Kimball instructed me to repent of the behavior and become so busy in the work of the Lord I wouldn't have time to sin. He told me I would meet a nice girl and get married.
He told me not to prostitute my body to other men. It seemed I was being taught the Churchesconcept of the homosexual, the sexual one only.
He then asked me to kneel in prayer with him in his office. He pronounced a beautiful prayer and blessing on me. As we stood up he remarked that I had tears in my eyes. He must have thought they were tears of repentance, but that was not totally correct.
It was true that I wished at that moment that I were not a homosexual. I wished I could serve the Lord and change my behavior. I wished I could give him the real information of how I progressed in the Church. I had been telling the leaders what they wanted to hear, the truth was not bearable to them.
However, I felt that way every time when, as an eleven year old boy, I knelt on each stair going up our second floor hall stairway steps to my room. Once in my room I would read some biblical passages of renewal. I then recited scriptures that concerned Christ's last supper. I ate a piece of bread and drank a cup of grape juice in symbolic remembrance and repentance repeatedly. I did this throughout my High School days.
I thought of the many hours I visited old folks' homes, the widowed, and served in a hundred capacities in my old church. I thought of the mission I had just completed in this Church.
So as tears dropped from my face I knew I had done everything I knew possible to change. I had no idea how I was going to change my sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. I knew that and that is why I cried. I wept for the hypocrisy of that moment. I couldn't speak to Brother Kimball about it; I could only cry. The leaders of the Church, the faith I believed in so strongly was demanding my hypocrisy.
He asked me to see him a few more times that week. I was to surrender some pornographic magazines to him which I had acquired. So back up those stairs, pass the smiling security guards to his office I went. This time he was not there. He was at home. He also wanted me to bring him some papers from the office of Joseph Fielding Smith, head of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.
Remembering the shaking knees episode, never the less, I went to his office. President Smith came out of his office and handed me the papers. As I placed the papers in my brief case the handle broke.
President Smith took the handle and wrapped some tape around it so it held. As I look back at that experience I was impressed by President Smith's concern and care. I wondered that perhap this was one way President Smith might have had an opportunity to look at a homosexual if he had not had that opportunity as yet in his life. After all I didn't look like one.
I arrived at Apostle Kimball's home. I waited in his livingroom. It was a comfortable suburban-type livingroom of subdued colors and middle class furniture on Laird Drive.
Ushered into Brother Kimball's study by Sister Kimball I noticed his desk. It was piled a foot high with papers and books. He informed me he was working on his book. I believe it was the Miracle Of Forgiveness. He sat at his desk and I sat across from him.
All I remember from this visit is giving him the pornographic material. He said he would burn it in the back yard in a trash barrel. I have no idea why he did not have me just dispose of the material myself but he placed it in a brown manilla envelope after he received it from me.
The last part of the interview concerned itself with my travel plans. I told the apostle that one of the missionaries Sister Smith, who had to do with my conversion in New York State after I was baptized would be picking me up. When I mentioned her name he seemed to redirect our conversation into a set dialogue.
He told me not to report to her what we had talked about. Then as if we were in a play he seemed to be acting to me. He repeated previous asked questions about my mission, superficial things we had already discussed in other interviews. He told me to let her know that we had been discussing my mission. This was only one of many puzzling behaviors I experienced with then Apostle Kimball. It appeared from my visits that Apostle Kimball was keeping a file on everyone Gay or Lesbian whom he interviewed.
When I left Apostle Kimball's home Sister Smith was waiting for me and as we talked she told me " you don't want to be one of those people in his file."
Later I met Sister Smith's sister in a gay bar in Salt Lake City. She verified that she had spoken with Elder Kimball. She was one of the people in his files. With counsel from Apostle Kimball on one side and these real people struggling as I was on the other I began to feel that I was not really able to live a genuine life. I must placate to my Church leaders, give nuances of the truth to my friends and what was I telling myself?
Perhaps the Churches program for dealing with gay and lesbian people evolved from misinformation. Of course we want to serve on a mission, be Sunday School chorister or geneology persons in the ward. We try to tell you what we are like until you can not receive the truth of our lives. We feel like hypocrites. We decide to serve no matter what, anyway. The Church leaders think we are cured.
Some of us maybe bisexual. When we are confronted with a choice of membership, salvation, and eternal progression or eternal life it becomes necessary for bisexual people to sacrifice half of their desires to attain acceptance by the Church. For homosexual men and women to sacrifice all their ability to be intimate loving persons is an impossibility to them. The Church thinks homosexuals can change from those bisexual persons who hold the line.
I believe the Church more than any other group upon the face of the whole earth has the ability to
know the truth from God through his servants the prophets. When these brethren rely upon many
surface appearances a whole program can be devised which maybe built on poor foundations.
Why do we rely upon ourselves when we could know what God wishes to be done. Has the
prophet petitioned God for this particular section of its membership? Not based upon what logic
has been expressed but upon the will of Our Father in Heaven?