Novel puts readers into the shoes of a gay Mormon teen who wants to stay worthy

 

Review by Doug Gibson

Note: I reviewed the novel, "No Going Back," by Jonathan Langford in 2009. It was published only of StandardBlogs, a feature that the Standard-Examiner newspapaer carelessly allowed to go defunct. In the most recent William Morris email of A Motley Vision, Morris remembered Langford -- who died eight years ago. He paid tribute to his sole novel, which is an excellent book. I decided to search Wayback and find my review of "No Going Back." It has comments from that time, including one from Mr. Langford. To achieve permanence for the review, I place it here on the Culture of Mormonism blog.

“I made my choice. I did the right thing and stood up for the church. But it’s just so hard. Being around people. People not liking me. People pretending I’m not even there.”

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Or so says teenager Paul Ficklin, a gay Latter-day Saint in freelance writer Jonathan Langford’s novel, “No Going Back.” The new Zarahemla Books offering has a premise that many haven’t contemplated before. It allows the reader to get inside the head of an active-in-the-church gay teenager who desperately wants to live the Gospel and the law of chastity even if it will deny him the instinctive, God-given need of future love, companionship and family.

In “No Going Back,” Paul rejects a gay/straight alliance club at his school because it teaches him to reject LDS doctrine and embrace his sexuality. As a result he is outed by a vindictive member.

The irony is he feels far less acceptance from his straight school and LDS Church peers — in fact he’s frequently taunted — than from the GSA former friends who he left.

Although it’s didactic at times and has too much sequence introductions with characters thinking, “No Going Back” is a powerful tale. The story revolves around Paul’s long relationship with his straight friend, Chad Mortensen, who happens to be the bishop’s son. Chad is the first person to which Paul reveals his homosexuality. Though there are a lot of bumps in the road — some of it normal best friend spats — Chad ultimately becomes Paul’s biggest defender. Another help to Paul is his single mom, Barbara. Chad’s father, Bishop Richard Mortensen, also provides potentially lifesaving encouragement to Paul, counseling Paul through his teenage years with a constant reminder to him that LDS doctrine does not regard same-sex attraction by itself as a sin and that God loves him.

But one dilemma Paul has throughout most of the novel is a constant loneliness that comes with being gay and having longings completely distinct from his role models and most friends. Pushing away from those at the GSA — who encourage him to be a gay teen — so he can live his religious beliefs comes with a price I think most straight people wouldn’t accept.

There is a scene midway in “No Going Back” where Bishop Mortensen, overworked and dealing with marital stress, chats with his kindly father in law, a former local church leader. His father in law disapproves of how Mortensen is handling Paul as too permissive. The scene is probably a microcosm of the hell many gay people experience when dealing with religious leaders. Their feelings, which they can’t control, are deemed sinful. In the LDS Church, that is not true. The irony, as Paul discovers, is that not enough of his church peers, even perhaps those in authority, have learned that.

Langford’s novel is not designed to please those who take strident positions pro and con on gay rights. It’s no coincidence that a Prop. 8-type gay marriage battle is included as a backdrop to the plot in “No Going Back.” I’ve read a lot of different viewpoints on Langford’s novel on LDS-related Web sites. It’s getting a lot of buzz, which I hope helps Zarahemla’s sales.

Many, I fear, will scorn “No Going Back” due to its protagonist choosing to stay with a religion that calls his preferred sexual practice a sin. They have a point that seems to make sense: Be who you are. But religion doesn’t always make sense. It calls for obedience. There are no doubt countless young people with same-sex attraction trying to obey a traditional Christian lifestyle. And the gay/straight alliance, which preaches tolerance, has no tolerance for Paul after he tells them he regards homosexuality as a sin.

What’s missing in the harsh criticism religion gets often in regards to issues such as gay marriage is that it is only a very small part of an entire belief system. To place too much emphasis on one aspect of the gospel can be a road to apostasy, whether it’s the Word of Wisdom or gay marriage. Paul learns that during his experiences.

In “No Going Back,” we don’t know if Paul’s going to make it long term as a faithful member. A spiritual survivor, he’s plugging away, reading his scriptures, praying and going to church.

In a poignant scene, Paul seeks out the church patriarch who gave him a blessing, asking for more insight on his future family life. His recorded blessing is vague on that. He gets sympathy and some platitudes, but no answer.

Although disillusioned, Paul remains an active Mormon, trying to do the best he can in the world God sent him to to be tested. The difference from most of us is the added burden of being gay that Paul has to deal with.

As I seem to mention every time I review a Zarahemla novel, I wish this book was on the shelves at Deseret Book. A lot of us could benefit by reading it.

Mormon folklore as diverse, tragic and humorous as other religions

 

A friend loaned me a book published in 1956, "Saints of Sage and Saddle: Folklore Among the Mormons," by Austin and Alta Fife, that turned into a treasure over the weekend I read it.

"Saints of Sage..." is a collection of Mormon folk tales and tall tales. Anecdotes abound from diverse sources that include prophets and pioneers. The prologue essay, "A Mormon from the Cradle to the Grave," is just plain outstanding. It's folksy and witty, irreverent but never disrespectful. Latter-day Saints, warts and all, are captured in this book, but there's always an affection underneath the banter.

I'd wager that any reader who has been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for at least 40 years can recall hearing some of the folklore related in the book. One anecdote on polygamy recalls two LDS apostles on the way to Idaho to attend a church meeting passing a school with children tumbling out of the schoolhouse. A non-Mormon reverend turned to the apostle and asked him if the scene reminded him of his childhood. The apostle replied, "No, it reminds me of my father's backyard."

Long ago, when the church was more interesting (as my friend Cal Grondahl says), devils were frequently cast out of hijacked members and the Three Nephites tended not to be so publicity shy. In one anecdote, one of the Nephite trio is generous enough to show himself to an elderly lady who praised God that late in her life her prayer to see a Nephite perform a miracle had been answered. LDS folklore has it that Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois, who failed to protect the Prophet Joseph Smith, died loathsome, unpopular and in poverty. Another past anecdote involves LDS apostle and Logan Temple president Marriner W. Merrill arguing with Satan himself in his temple office, Old Scratch having visited to request that Merrill stop temple proceedings.

The LDS belief in a pre-existence is noted in the book. Allegedly the LDS Prophet Wilford Woodruff warned in his journal that there were literally trillions of Satan's army on earth doing their best to lead them astray. Woodruff's calculation of the earth holding 1 trillion people at a time seems way too high to this reviewer, though. Nevertheless, the Mormon belief in a pre-mortal existence is very personal to members, who worry that they may have lost friends and family members to Lucifer long ago. It can provide mixed emotions on how to respond to temptation of a personal nature.

No book on Mormon folklore would be any good if there wasn't a section on the legendary, cussing, LDS leader J. Golden Kimball. He has a chapter in "Saints of Sage ..." The former mule skinner once said, "Yeah, I love all of God's children, but there's some of them that I love a damn sight more than I do others."

Kimball also possessed wit: When former LDS U.S. Sen. Reed Smoot wanted to marry, he boasted to Kimball that he had just received the blessing of LDS Prophet Heber J. Grant. Kimball dead-panned, "Well now, I just don't know, Reed. I just don't know. You're a pretty old man, you know. And Sister Sheets, she's a pretty young woman. And she'll expect more from you than just the laying on of hands."

And once, during an excommunication trial for a man accused of adultery, Kimball, after hearing the man admit to being in bed with the married woman but not having sex with her, laconically said, "Brethren, I move that the brother be excommunicated. It's obvious that he doesn't have the seed of Israel in him."

The Mountain Meadows Massacre, and its aftermath, created much darker folklore. The wife of a Southern Utah Mormon, in the brief interlude where the spared young children of the slain settlers were being cared for in LDS homes, recalls a woman coming to her in her garden asking to see her child. She was led into the house. The Mormon wife followed the mysterious visitor, who disappeared the moment she reached the room where the child was.

"Saints of Sage and Saddle" is folklore history that the interested will spend hours poring over. Besides the tales, there are old LDS hymns, period photos and an index for quick reference. I choose to end this column with a song Mormons once enjoyed I encountered in this book, and once sung by Ogden's L.M. Hilton:

The Boozer
I was out upon a flicker and had had far too much liquor,
And I must admit that I was quite pie-eyed,
And my legs began to stutter, and I lay down in the gutter
And a pig arrived and lay down by my side.
As I lay there in the gutter with my heart strings all aflutter,
A lady passed and this was heard to say,
You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses.
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

 

--Doug Gibson

 

Originally published at StandardBlogs