On May 1-2, PBS broadcast a four-hour special "The Mormons."
This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted March 4, 2006.
This text is found at
www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html
PBS: Another anguishing issue that faces you and every church:
homosexuality. On a personal level, how do you counsel people dealing with that?
HOLLAND: ... The emotion and the pain and the challenge of [dealing with
homosexuality] has to rank among the most taxing, most visceral of any of the
issues that any religious group wrestles with. As others of my colleagues and
brethren have, I have counseled hundreds -- I don't know how many hundreds -- of
these young people. I say young people because often that's the group that come
to us most, but there are people of every age struggling. ... The counsel I have
given is that God loves them every bit as much as he loves me; the church loves
them. We do have doctrine; we do have borders; we do have foundational pieces on
which we stand. And moral chastity -- heterosexual ... and homosexual -- are
areas where God has spoken and where the church has a position. ...
I spoke earlier about the price everyone has to pay for the blessing of the
covenant, to be counted within the institutional circle of the blessings of the
church. ... I have spent a significant portion of the last few years of my
ministry pleading to give help to those who don't practice [homosexuality] but
who are struggling with the impressions and the feelings and the attractions and
the gender confusion. Or if they do practice or are trying to deal with it, that
group I have spent scores of hours with, if nothing else, just saying: "Hang on,
hope on, try on. ... Get through the night; get to the light." ...
I believe in that light, and I believe in that hope, and I believe in that
peace. So I offer it without apology, but I know sometimes that's thin to people
who would want more. Any more than I can see it compromising on its heterosexual
position of chastity before marriage and fidelity afterward, I don't anticipate
it that [the church] would change on homosexual behavior. But none of that has
anything to do with my belief in the value of that soul and the love that God
has for that person.
But it's just that ... there is a quid pro quo in terms of wanting the church's
blessing on our lives. If someone chooses behavior that goes in a different
direction, people choose that every day. And while that may make me weep, ...
people are free to do that. ...
I believe with all my heart that it's divine language; it's a divine
commandment. There really are "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" in life. And
in this world, in some contemporary life, thou shalts and thou shalt nots are
not popular on the face of it; it wouldn't matter what subject. But we'll always
have some, and we'll try to help each other master that and embrace it and see
it through and be exalted on the other end.
PBS: It's tough being gay anyplace in society, in any church, but
especially here in yours.
HOLLAND: Absolutely. I don't think there's any question about that. And
it's true of so many other things about the church. We're so defined by marriage
and family. ... So it's got that added component of pain in a church where we do
advocate and expect and encourage marriage -- traditional marriage, man to a
woman, woman to a man -- and family and children. And for anyone in whatever gay
or lesbian inclination may exist, ... the marriage I have and the marriage I've
seen my children have and I pray for my grandchildren to have, they say, "For me
it's an experience I'll never have." And true to the Holland tradition, I burst
into tears, and I say, "Hope on, and wait and let me walk with you, and we'll be
faithful, be clean, and we'll get to the end of this."
I do know that this will not be a post-mortal condition. It will not be a
post-mortal difficulty. I have a niece who cannot bear children. That is the
sorrow and the tragedy of her life. She who was born to give birth will never
give birth, and I cry with her. ... I just say to her what I say to people
struggling with gender identity: "Hang on, and hope on, and pray on, and this
will be resolved in eternity." These conditions will not exist post-mortality. I
want that to be of some hope to some. ...
Copyright © 1997-2007 WGBH Educational Foundation
|
