 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
“Being Queer Is Just as Special and Peculiar as Being Mormon” By Paula Smith April 2006 "I believe that Utah may just be the most queer state ever," says returned missionary and gay activist Troy Williams. "And I'm not talking about queer in the sense that we have several gay bars… I'm talking about how people outside of Utah look on us with a strange gaze of puzzlement and confusion." Williams is the host of Now Queer This!, a radio show which airs on Wednesdays from Salt Lake City's KRCL. On April 12, the show explored Utah's queerness with the help of anthropologist David Knowlton and social historian D. Michael Quinn. "Utah and the Mormons have been queer to the nation for a long time," said Knowlton. "There's always been this suspicion of what Mormons do in their bedrooms." Knowlton discovered this as a teenager, when he went to a rodeo in Calgary, Canada, and was asked whether it's true that Mormons have orgies inside the temples. "These are the folklore things that abound in the West," said Knowlton. "To the nation, we're queer. It goes all the way back to polygamy, and yet we're still queer." Knowlton, who served an LDS mission in Bolivia, explained that in Latin America Mormon missionaries, always going two by two, stand out as peculiar. "And people speculate what they do with each other. From the Latin American perspective, it's not expected for people be celibate, so people assume the missionaries are doing each other." Mormon historian Michael Quinn agrees with Knowlton in noting that polygamy is one of the things that makes Mormons queer. "Once it became widely know that Mormons were practicing plural marriage, the reaction became very hostile," said Quinn. "People regarded the departure from traditional marriage as a threat to the society at large. There were people who said, 'This is a terrible thing because, if allowed to continue, it will destroy our civilization.'" According to Quinn, this is how Mormons came to be defined as Other. "But they were Other not only in religious belief—Mormons almost became a separate entity, a separate ethnic group. They were perceived as being aliens, even though they were overwhelmingly native-born Americans. They were perceived as alien in their behaviors and therefore aliens to the values of good Americans." "In a sense Mormonism really helped me along the way of being gay…" reflected Williams. "I want all Mormons to know being queer is just as special and peculiar as being Mormon." Said Williams: "I grew up, like all Mormons do, hearing about how in the last days the prophet will call his people to once again live plural marriage. When the day comes, we queers will put aside our differences and join with you in solidarity to repeal Amendment 3. Yes, we will stand in common cause with the Latter-day Saints, so that you can marry according to the dictates of your faith and we can marry according to the dictates of our hearts." "After all, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was just sealed to his second wife last week. He's now sealed to two women for time and all eternity. Which now makes Elder Nelson a polygamist." You can listen to KRCL at 90.9 FM or on the web at http://www.krcl.org  .
|
www.affirmation.org