Mongolia, Mormonism, and The 2015 Policy of Exclusion

Free Labor from a Gay Man to Help the LDS Church Stay in Mongolia

In the fall of 2015, I was in my second-to-last semester of coursework for my master's degree from Brigham Young University. My relationship with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had deteriorated since the start of my program. As I listened to sermon after sermon about the evils of same-sex marriage,  I had reached a crisis point with my faith and my sexuality. I knew I was gay. I was engaged to marry the love of my life. We had gotten engaged in City Creek Park in the summer of 2015, the same place that we had reconciled in 2014 after a brief hiatus in our relationship. We kept our relationship entirely secret while I was at BYU. I had felt like I needed to stay at BYU for reasons that were beyond my understanding. It wasn’t about finances. It wasn’t about the quality of the program. It was something deeper than that. I needed to be at BYU from 2014 to 2016.

The LDS Church had blasted the Obergefell v. Hodges decision earlier in the summer of 2015, but they were relatively quiet since this decision. It felt like maybe they had accepted that they had lost the culture war. But I sure saw my American Sign Language (ASL) seminary teacher from my senior year of high school posting about how this decision would erode the fabric of our society. She quoted the Family Proclamation.

“Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”

I had to unfriend her. I couldn’t stand to see someone who had loved me in her seminary class suddenly tell me that the ability to marry the man who I loved with all my soul was going to lead to the end times. It brought up all the stories that I had from ASL seminary about how much this woman hated LGBTQ+ people. It stung.

The Church’s decision in November 2015 to both categorize same-gender marriage as reason for a mandatory disciplinary council for "apostasy" and ban children in such a union from receiving a name and a blessing or baptism felt unnecessarily cruel. I was devastated. I watched as my now-husband cried on the ground of his apartment and took scissors to his temple recommend, even though he hadn’t used it in months. I struggled to perform well in my classes. But I couldn't be open about my pain with many of my classmates. Being out at BYU at the time put people under a microscope, so I decided to hide my pain and wait to fully come out until after graduation.

I struggled through the rest of the semester, particularly in a class with an extensive project that provided hundreds of hours of free labor for the LDS Church. I showed up to this class, but I couldn't pay attention. I wasn't invested in our project to design a community-based English as a foreign language curriculum for LDS missionaries in Mongolia. In order for these missionaries to maintain their visa status, they were required to teach English at least 20 hours a week in Mongolia. My professor didn’t post grades at all throughout the semester. We were left to guess how we did because this professor couldn’t stand the learning management system that BYU had designed for use on campus. No assignments were ever graded. We were left to wait until final judgement (the end of the semester) to know our grade.

Imagine how I felt as I provided free labor to the Church in light of the this policy targeted at same-sex families. I knew that I was at the end of the line with the LDS Church, but I needed to finish my degree. I wish I could have expressed how I felt. Maybe there were people, like so many faithful Latter-day Saints at the time, who felt heartache over this policy. Instead, I suffered silently. I distracted myself the best I could, and I thought I hid it well. But it was a battle every day to wake up with the courage to face another day. The Policy of Exclusion cut.

The end of the semester came, and I discovered how I had done in the course. I hadn't performed as well as I had expected, but I was also not surprised since I didn’t buy into the cronyism. I had given hundreds of hours of free labor to help missionaries remain in Mongolia. And what had these missionaries done? In the middle of this semester-long project, the missionaries filmed a demonstration lesson. It was an utter disaster. The missionaries did not want to teach English; they wanted to teach about the LDS Church. They were only doing this “service” to remain in the country. The LDS Church had enlisted volunteers to do work that could have been done by paid professionals, a pattern in how the LDS Church operates with skilled labor. And the missionaries were phoning it in because they saw the opportunity to teach English as a way to baptize more Mongolians.

I reached out to the professor and asked to meet about my grade in the course. He said he would be delighted to meet and that he had hoped that I would reach out. The professor explained to me that our grade was based mostly on peer assessments for the semester-long project. This instructor noted that I was distracted, and I hadn't performed at my true potential. Several classmates had noticed that I was using social media too much during class, but I was trying to cope with the incredible trauma of the November 2015 Policy of Exclusion. I also hadn’t put in more than was necessary for this project, like some of my classmates did. Some of my classmates were gunning for a full-time position at BYU after graduation; I knew that opportunity would never be a reality for me if I lived authentically.

I thought I had worked so hard, even though I had serious qualms with the free labor that I was giving to the LDS Church. This professor told me that I hadn't worked hard enough. My dreams of pursuing a PhD in Applied Linguistics died that January day in Provo. I cried. A lot. And I placed a lot of my self-worth on the assessment of another disappointing Mormon man who never saw me for who I was. It was a pattern that I had seen time and time again in my life.

My classmates and professor didn’t know I was suffering. Would they have judged me differently if they had known I was gay? Would the support of my classmates as I experienced trauma have helped me? I have faith in the kindness of many Latter-day Saints at BYU; I believe that some would have extended kindness. 

I left Provo in the spring of 2016, and I still saw the missionaries going to Mongolia around the campus of the English Language Center. Every time I saw them, I was reminded of my pain from my own mission, my trauma from that curriculum development class, and the anguish of hearing what that professor told me about my work. When I left Provo finally, a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t have to live up to this professor’s expectations.

LGBTQ+ Mormons live in fear of constant rejection and constant rhetorical violence (yes, violence) from Mormon men who choose cronyism and power within the LDS Church. Many good Mormons will disappoint you, even the ones that you expect may not. Someone has to stop the cycle. And I did.