Interesting Conversation with my Wife

So this morning I shared that BYU "It gets better" video with my wife (who, remember, doesn't yet know I'm trans).

It kinda blew her mind. And it started a conversation that I think will lead to me being able to share all of this with her.

My dear wife (from now on let's call her DW) has a good friend and former BYU roommate that she just found recently on Facebook. This friend, judging by her profile and posts there, appears to have come out as a lesbian, and is living with the consequences of that decision. Another of DW's friends, a boyfriend from high school that investigated the Church for a while in his teens, has also come out as gay, and is somewhere out in the third world serving others selflessly (just, I might add, as Christ might be doing if He were here). As someone who, like myself, grew up in the Church with President Kimball's views on gender and sexuality (such as in the Miracle of Forgiveness) very much the norm, these kinds of things tend to... well, challenge her worldview somewhat.

DW shared with me that she'd just read a press release from the Church decrying all forms of persecution (including against LGBTQs), which was apparently released in response to a teenager in northern Utah recently committing suicide over anti-gay bullying in his school. Attitudes in the Church, it seems, are changing. Perhaps too slowly for some, but they are definitely changing.

I want to make it clear that I think we need to continue to stand for truth and righteousness in a lone and often dreary world. That said, we also need to recognize the difference between real sins and those attitudes, thoughts, and actions that are sometimes wrongly perceived in our faith community as such. Until we receive further light and knowledge from the Lord through the prophet, the onus is on us as individuals and families to study it out in our minds and hearts, and love all our brethren and sisters--both LDS and otherwise--with Christ's unconditional love.

Truly, we live in interesting times.