The Promise

Note: This story contains a brief mention of sexual violence, suicidal ideation, and mental health.

As President Cook stepped into the church gymnasium filled with missionaries in their black suits and white shirts, gossiping around twelve or so round tables, I knew he was looking for me. I sat at a table near the door President Cook entered through, pressed in between two larger, toned missionaries who had lived in Southern California for months longer than I had. Their experience, their body mass, their overall worthiness to be here as Mormon missionaries set them apart from me: the missionary who had called President Cook a few days ago to confess that he felt attracted to other men.

President Cook’s eyes landed on me, and he hurried to me, ignoring the other missionaries vying for his attention and favor.

“How are you doing, Elder Anderson?” President Cook asked, bending in between me the missionary to my right.

Constantly aware of the attention of the fit missionaries on either side of me, I shrugged him off with a brief, high-pitched, “I’m fine.”

President Cook accepted this statement. He nodded and walked to the front of the room where he started our day-long missionary training meeting. I stayed seated at my table on the side of the room, pretending to listen and take notes.

When I called President Cook a week earlier, I asked him to send me home from my two-year missionary service, afraid that my desire for men made me unworthy to be a missionary. President Cook refused, telling me that we would talk again in a week at this meeting. Because I told him I was fine, I worried that he would let it go, and I would miss my opportunity to be sent home.

As the meeting closed, President Cook gathered the missionaries at the back of the gym for a picture. I stood on the back row, where too many missionaries lined up, all of us insisting we were tall enough we needed to stand in the back. The photographer asked us to angle in and get closer to one another. As the men flanking me pressed their bodies against mine, I looked out and caught President Cook watching me.

President Cook and I stared at one another. I tried to convey all of the pain I felt, as a man struggling with same-gender attraction who lived in Southern California, where, just two years earlier, the religion that I represented had funneled millions of dollars into preventing the legalization of same-sex marriage. Some fragment of that anguish must have passed between us, because President Cook’s smile crumpled. He looked away.

Once more, President Cook hurried to me as soon as he could. This time he led me out of the church gym through the church building’s hallways to his office, where he settled in behind his desk, and gestured for me to sit in a chair across from him.

“It breaks my heart,” President Cook started after waiting to see if I would break the silence, “that you have been carrying this for so long, without telling anyone.”

I sat silent, unsure what to say. Part of me hoped he would send me home. Part of me couldn't imagine the shame I'd bring on my devout Mormon family if I returned home from my mission after only spending four months away.

Finally, I told him about the one sexual experience I’d had. A night on brown shag carpet with an older cousin. I was six.

He told me that any sins I’d committed before I was baptized at eight, were washed away in the baptismal font.

I told him I wasn’t sure. I asked him if he believed what happened with my cousin could have led to my feelings of same-sex attraction. The words of Richard G. Scott, a Mormon apostle hanging between us: "At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse."

President Cook told me that perhaps what happened between my cousin and me had led to the feelings of same-sex attraction I voiced, but he also didn’t believe that I was gay, and there were missionaries under his jurisdiction who he believed were gay.

“I just can’t stop thinking about men,” I finally said, realizing that I was not going to be sent home. Trying to manage my disappointment and my joy that I wouldn't disappoint my parents.

“That’s because this is an addiction,” President Cook said, opening a desk drawer. “You are addicted to men.”

President Cook compared my attractions to the seagulls flying around the palms outside his office window. I couldn’t stop the seagulls from flying, but I could stop them from building a nest in my hair.

Object lesson finished, President Cook opened a desk drawer and withdrew a glossy spiral bound book. He held it out to me. Across the front were the words: LDS Family Services Addiction Recovery Program: A Guide to Addiction Recovery and Healing. I would later write in my own handwriting on the cover the words: “Shaun Michael Anderson” and “Philippians 4:13 ‘I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me.’”

“No one has a deeper understanding of the repentance process than an addict,” President Cook said, as I took the Addiction Recovery Program workbook into my own hands. “Work through these steps, and I promise that you will begin to heal.”

He used the techniques we had just discussed in our missionary training: teach a principle, provide homework that would allow the student to internalize the message, promise a blessing for faithful completion of the homework. Homosexuality is an addiction, study the Addiction Recovery Program workbook, God will make you straight.

I never made it past Step 4.

The seagulls built their nest.

I would finish out my two year Mormon mission, scribbling questions and affirmations in the margins of the workbook. I would answer each question posed by the workbook in explicit detail.

And then, six months after finishing my Mormon mission, another church leader would send me to an Addiction Recovery meeting, where I could get support for my "addiction to men.

I would sit around a table with other men my age, attending the same university. I would listen to each of them express that they were addicted to porn, straight porn, and when it came time for me to speak, I would say, "Hello, my name is Shaun," and "Pass."

When the meeting ended, I left.

I stopped filling in the margins of the workbook.

I decided I had less to fear from the seagulls then I did from the men in that meeting.