Gay Man Commits Suicide After Mormon Church Severs Afterlife Ties to His Children

I’m mormon (and actively support noh8 and HRC) and I want everyone who reads this to know the Bishop did not have power to sever the “Eternal” ties. That was not his place at all- and there’s nothing he actually could do, to sever this man from his family. Clearly the wife was extremely homophobic and her behavior (and the bishop’s) is not typical of the LDS church. No one is perfect, especially in any religion, and I hope this mistake made by the Bishop and the man’s wife, isn’t the prevalent story and experience that the gay community will remember. Just a week or two ago, an openly gay LDS man was asked to be a Bishopric member in California, and he accepted. 

RIP Mr. Egnew!  May you find peace wherever you are now that you couldn’t find here

As a mother to a gay son this is what upsets me about the close minded people in this world… No one had the right to do this to man or anyone  wether gay or straight… Please treat everyone the way you want to be treated and respect there lifestyles…..

The Mormon church should be held accountable and fully responsible for their direct role in this unfortunate event. This is an example of the evils an organized group can perpetrate on individual citizens when beliefs supercede humanity.

Every time I start to not despise the LDS Church because I’m acquainted with some honorable and good-hearted Mormons, something like this happens. How horrible for this man, his mean-spirited wife, their five kids, and all their friends…and you don’t see the Church acknowledging their fault or doing anything to keep it from happening again. Oh, and Braydon J. Clark? How about a name for that  ”openly gay man in a Church Leadership calling”? You say that, I call bullshit.

This article seeks to deceive and lead people astray.  There are many inaccuracies in this article.  First of all there are many gay members of the church that choose to live the teachings of Christ and are full tithe payors, attend church meetings, hold callings and offices in the priesthood, serve missions and in the temple, all while living a clean life and abstaining from indulgences into sodomy and other forbidden paths.  

A Bishop cannot invalidate eternal sealings, and a Bishop or any member could be ex-communicated if they were having sex outside of marriage (gay or straight sex).  Excommunication goes above a Bishop’s head to the Stake Presidency and I believe all the way to the Prophet.  For certain – the church didn’t bully him to do anything, he chose to take his life. 

His wife must have been horrified to find that her husband is more attracted to other men than to her.  Was it more important for him to “come out” than it was to love his wife and children (til death do us part at least)? 

I am most of all sad for this poor man and his family and expecially his children.  The writer of this article knows not of what spirit he / she is of. 

Its too bad that this man decided to take his life.   But those of you who want to judge his wife and his bishop need to be careful of being hypocrites.  

After all, you cannot be excommunicated from the LDS Church merely for being homosexual. It takes much more.  And in fact, its not even a sin to be homosexual in the LDS Church.  

But behaviors — now those can be sins.

What happened here, most likely (if he was excommunicated or disfellowshipped), is that this man told his wife that he had been cheating on her with other men.   Violation of marriage covenants IS an offense for which you can be excommunicated — sex with the opposite gender.  Sex with the same gender.  It does not matter. It is still a violation of the marriage.

And the wife’s reaction is not different from the reactions of women all over the US who have been told that their husbands have been cheating on them.  Read the papers.  Women cheated on will throw their guy’s stuff out of the house, wreck his car, leave him, take the kids, and other things.  It may not be the right way to react, but people are people.  

And Just because this man is a homosexual it does not mean he is a good guy.  Cheating on your spouse is distinctly *bad*.  Who knows what kinds of problems they had been working through?  

People who say “oh, his wife should have been more understanding” should ask themselves how understanding they would be — at least at first — if their spouse came to them and said “I have been cheating on you for years — I lied to you many times”.  If you haven’t been married, this may seem like an easy one.  And if your marriage has been just peachy, it might also be hard to understand. But for most people, marriages have to be worked at .. and worked at hard.  To find out that while you have been working so hard, and trusting so completely, you have been betrayed and not really loved, is extremely difficult to tolerate.

So, think a bit before you judge others.

++++++++++++
P.S.  Alissa Corinne below is incorrect.  Excommunication does, indeed, sever ties in eternity.   Her understanding of the doctrine is incorrect.
However, it is unlikely that he was excommunicated.  Bishops are not able to Excommunicate people who hold the Melchizedek Priesthood.  They can, however, disfellowship.   Which is a state of being sort of on Probation to see if you will, in the future, live up to your covenants before you are able to fully participate in Church activities, but you are still a member and no knowledge of your status is announced to the congregation.  This is likely to be what happened if he had some sort of action taken against him by the Bishop.  

Though a Bishop, or a Prophet, does not have the power to do, it doesn’t stop them from wielding it. I was devastated by this. And I believe that this is very typical behavior from my personal witness of it. 

Whether he had the power to or not, whatever action was taken contributed to causing the man to commit suicide. There is no denying or making light of the fact that this bishop shares some of the responsibility, and that the church position on homosexuality is in need of review. 

Mitch Mayne, the openly gay LDS Bishop, is barred from practicing any homosexual acts. He may not ever have a male lover again, he is only allowed to claim affiliation by word, not by deed. 

No matter what the church said, any church, not just LDS, NOBODY has the right to put another human through that much hell, gay, straight, bi, atheist, Catholic, Christian, whatever. NOBODY deserves that.

Disgusting! When will they realize that god doesn’t teach hatred?

I love how a group of ‘church elders’ can somehow pass judgement on whether anyone gets into heaven.  Seriously, most religion is such an ignorant, divisive and flawed that I do not understand why people still follow these ideologies.  You stopped believing in Santa Claus and the world didn’t end.  Why is no ‘god in our image’ so difficult to grasp?  Civilization would be better to leave this voodoo fiction in the past…

You guys talk about heaven, hell and god like we have real evidence for all of it when in fact there is none. If more people would look at all the evidence for everything in life people wouldn’t believe such nonsense and live the one life they absolutely are certain to have to the fullest and not concern themselves with the burdens society puts on them. What a shame to feel as if you have to be with someone your not attracted to for years let alone committing suicide after you admit you can no longer live the lie you started while trying to comply to what you have been told was right. Please open your mind and educate yourself so we can try and stop this from happening again.

You guys talk about heaven, hell and god like we have real evidence for all of it when in fact there is none. If more people would look at all the evidence for everything in life people wouldn’t believe such nonsense and live the one life they absolutely are certain to have to the fullest and not concern themselves with the burdens society puts on them. What a shame to feel as if you have to be with someone your not attracted to for years let alone committing suicide after you admit you can no longer live the lie you started while trying to comply to what you have been told was right. Please open your mind and educate yourself so we can try and stop this from happening again.