To Score a Root Ball

My mother and I planted almost thirty willow trees at the perimeter of her property several weeks ago. Most have taken hold, the neighbors cattle destroyed almost three. In fifty years, give or take, the trees will sweep together and provide a beautiful barrier from the traffic (one or two cars per day) that travel past the house. While planting the trees I remembered several tricks I must of retained from my youth: it is easier if the hole is full of water, the ground must be level, and, most important, you must score the root ball. The process of scoring requires a knife, a long bladed one. Right before setting the tree into the hole, the knife must be run deep into the compacted dirt, through the mass of roots, slicing down and away. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This allows the tangled mess to grab hold and set roots in the surrounding soil, otherwise they will stay coiled and the tree will die. There is sacrifice here. Several intact roots will be cleaved, sloughed off. Everything has a purpose.

This struck me only recently, several days ago, in fact, as I watched a barrage of Facebook friends of mine heatedly discuss a recent speech given by Dallin H. Oaks, Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Oaks talked in front of thousands of BYU-Idaho students in Rexburg, chronicling the heat taken by The Church as a result of their contributions to Proposition 8 and other recent gay rights legislation. Before actually reading the talk, I made several knee-jerk assumptions about what had been said. For me, growing up in a staunch Mormon family, having ministered to TWO gay brothers after bitter attacks against their "lifestyle choices" by other family members, I knew The Church's stand on Prop 8, and was fairly certain how they would justify it. Couching their actions in religious freedom, Oaks, at one point, compares members being discriminated against to the civil rights marchers in the 60's.

Talk read and now I need to score the root ball. The Church has always managed a way out of things. For them it is just reward for following God. For those of us still wound up, to greater and lesser degrees, in The Church, the decisions handed down from on high never seem to exactly justify their means. When polygamy stymied Utah's chances at statehood, the Lord sent a revelation. When The Church was being castigated because of its racial policy that was 14 years behind even the most lack-luster of groups, poof: a revelation. (There are other examples.) With Prop 8 and homosexuality, there was no poof, no revelation, just a mainlined order to the members: STOP THIS FROM PASSING, and there was hundreds of millions of dollars. Tithing money, either way you look at it.

When I tried to argue with my sister in-law about it, we dovetailed the conversation into homosexuality itself. She defends the family. I take a good look around and see the family she is defending needs a lot more than that. She claims faith and belief. I see fear and reluctance. But as I thought about it, I realized that it comes down to lived experience, not logic or tacit belief. I know what it feels like to jeopardized: mind, body, and soul. I see privilege where others see normalcy. And the strange thing is, I don't wish that on anyone--for two reasons. One: it's mine, even when I know how foolish a thing to think. Two: if given insight, I wonder how much of the knowledge would warp for lack of use, therefore wasted, therefore back to square one.

I feel a hurried sense of caution when talking to members of the LDS church about homosexuality, even those of my own family. I have a unique experience--just as every other gay person--but in terms of sheer quantity, my family is a rarity, but not the exception. Three gay children. Those twisted roots that keep circling in the dark for safety. When the ball is scored, we've taken lungfulls of air and called it freedom, only to be plunged into more dark, more searching. I am ok with this. I am ok fighting the Mormons on everything, every precept, every line--because I still live among them. I still eat with them and call them family. And I wait, watching, germinating my hope that even in the dark, we'll all take grip of something solid and be held.


Oaks's talk can be found here:
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/religious-freedom