Hi, I'm Cherie

My oldest son is gay and left the church many years ago. I finally came to the conclusion that I just couldn't believe that God could say to to our son "Geez, what a shame you turned out that way. Now you have to be alone for the rest of your life." I had been slowly easing out of the church for years because I was finding things that were impossible for me to believe and it took a perfect storm of awful events over a weekend to get me to go cold turkey.

One Saturday in September of 2013, my now ex-husband got a call from the ward clerk telling him that someone from the bishopric needed to talk with us. At that time we worked in the ward library during Sunday School and Priesthood/Relief Society meeting. That was a wonderful church job for my atheist ex and me. It was good for him because he felt strongly that he needed to support me in church and working in the library meant he wasn't teaching anyone anything. It was a good job for me because I'm chemically sensitive and we had moved into a new building a couple of years before. The church building was still making me sick and I was rarely able to stay the entire three hours.

I worried about the impending interview all night. That Sunday morning, I heard a couple of the ward leaders in the hallway slamming gay people. I don't remember exactly what they were saying but it was ugly enough to upset me and I felt bad that I wasn't brave enough to confront them about it. Because it was during class, I'm probably the only one who overheard their disturbing conversation.

About twenty minutes later, the 1st counselor in the bishopric came into the library and asked us if it was a good time to talk. He then told us we were going to be released from the library and called to be the people in charge of cleaning the church. We would have to call people on Friday night and supervise them on Saturday morning. Immediately, I knew this call couldn't be from God, which kind of shocked me. First, my ex and I are introverts. We don't call anyone. In fact, we rarely even call our own children. Second, I'm allergic to most cleaning chemicals and I had just hired someone to clean our house so that I could avoid being exposed to them. I told him that we really couldn't accept that job and why. Even though I had known this man for 20 years and he knew I was a TBM, he told me that if I wasn't willing to accept church jobs, I would lose my temple recommend. I was totally flabbergasted! My ex told him that we would think about it and the counselor left.

When we got home I was really upset. Our home teacher had an appointment to see us that night and he spent his entire lesson telling us how evil and depraved gay people are and how they are ruining the work of the Lord. Again, I didn't say anything to stop him, who knows why, I was probably stunned by that point. The home teacher left and I shut the front door.

When I turned around my ex said "So?" I told him I was done. I was done with the church. Never again was anyone going to come into my house and bash gays. Never again would someone threaten my temple recommend and eternal salvation over me telling someone why I couldn't do a church job. We meet with the bishop the next Sunday to inform him of our decision and we've never been back. I know I would have left the church in the next couple of years because I was having problems with the doctrine, this perfect storm weekend just made everything very clear to me why I shouldn't stay any longer.