Breeding them Tender (Femmy)

I attended a baby's blessing at an LDS ward last Sunday. It had been a long time since I had last attended the LDS church and a fast & testimony meeting on top of that! I didn't feel weird not partaking of the sacrament although the thought did come to my mind how at City of Hope the pastors always stress the fact that everyone is invited to partake of communion, even if you don't believe in anything, but that's not the point of this post--I'll get back on track, promise.

So finally testimony time came around--we had taken some paper to keep tallies on how many times we heard key words (Jesus-Christ, Joseph Smith and such-) and make it a little more lively. As usual the bishop shared his and invited members to do the same. After a few awkward moments of silence people started making their way up to share. We heard the token stalwart member who had spiritual experiences to share, a couple of kids, crying women and so on; at one point a guy got up and started sharing his thoughts at which point Jeff scribbled on his paper that his gaydar was going haywire. I paid a little more attention to the guy and well, yeah the way he expressed himself and gestures gave me cause to agree with Jeff (I don't have a great gaydar myself--I usually can't tell right off the bat)--maybe I should think like one of my friends does: Everyone is gay until proven otherwise--ha!

Anyway--getting back to the post it was interesting to see some of the other testimonies and the inflection that comes with them, particularly from the males. Some of them did seem spiritual and all but at some point I mentioned to Jeff how easy it is/was for many of us gay folk to navigate in the church pretty much unrecognized for our queerness all in the name of spirituality and he said something that he had mentioned before but I had not completely understood: "That's because in the church they breed them femmy" I guess it made sense to me at that point even though I had heard yet another friend before who mentioned that some people outside of Utah say that their gaydar doesn't work in Utah because everyone is trying to act all spiritual and such...

Good food for thought!

All in all I had a good experience at the LDS church. I had made a decision a long time ago that if I ever found myself in a situation where I needed to support a LDS family member in their life-events I would be supportive and make the best of the situation. I have to admit that up to now the last few times I hadn't been so much at peace with going back to a sacrament meeting but this time my impressions were not as bad and I felt in a much better place--not that I'll start attending my local ward or anything!!

One last observation: Jesus-Christ and Joseph Smith were neck-and-neck being mentioned in testimonies, according to my tally marks but Jesus won only very slightly--I'm not 100% sure what to make of that or if it even matters at this point...