Latter-day sinners

Five years ago, Roman Feeser came across a Newsweek article about a gay California man named Henry Stuart Matis, who, in 2000, shot himself in the head on the steps of his Mormon church. The last line of the article resonated most with the playwright: “The people who dressed [Matis] for burial were struck by the sight of his knees, deeply callused from praying for an answer that never came.”

“I thought, Who prays that hard?” says Feeser, 34. Compelled to find out, he moved from New York to Salt Lake City for one year, and, as an experiment, attended Evergreen, a gay-conversion therapy program that is unofficially connected with the Mormon Church. Feeser also interviewed Mormon families who had lost relatives to suicide, and investigated the circumstances surrounding Matis’s death. Missa Solemnis, or the Play About Henry is the fruit of his labors.

Feeser became something of a Mormonologist during this experience. He wanted to tell Matis’s story, and in doing so, details the policies of a religion enormously influential on its members, and yet mysterious to outsiders.

The Mormon view on homosexuality mirrors that of all Judeo-Christian religions in one important way: Leviticus 18:22. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: It is abomination,” is the one Bible source widely used by right-wing radio hosts and other doomsayers to attack homosexuality.

But there’s more than Leviticus to the Mormon view. For one thing, the terms gay and homosexual are not used in speech; rather, Church leadership recognizes only a condition of “same-gender attraction.” Justin Utley, 31, the sound designer on Missa Solemnis and a gay ex-Mormon who attended Evergreen in his twenties, explains, “Mormons believe homosexuality is not biological, but that something happened in childhood—a learned behavior that can be unlearned. I was convinced at one point that I had been molested, and I hadn’t.”

The other aspect of the religion that stands in opposition with homosexuality is the Church’s view of the afterlife. According to Utley, “The main goal for members of the Mormon Church is to become a god one day. And you cannot without a wife—or more than one—with you in the afterlife. Not if you are gay, not if you don’t have a family.” Big Love’s opening sequence, in which Bill Paxton and his wives pray at a dinner table in outer space, somewhat depicts what Mormons believe is to come: “When you die, you inherit a planet,” says Feeser.

Living with imperfection is not an option, says Utley. “Most suicides would rather take the chance and kill themselves and move on, without the baggage”; the plus side in their minds being that they can be baptized postmortem, and those who martyr themselves before they become sinners still have a chance to achieve godhood. “When I excommunicated myself,” he adds, “I took that away from them.”

Utley began his exit when he learned that the Church encouraged members to donate millions to Proposition 22 in California, a 2000 referendum similar to this year’s Prop. 8, which, if passed, would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman in the state. Henry Stuart Matis saw the Mormon-funded yes on prop. 22 posters everywhere he went, until he took his life shortly before Election Day.

Today, the Mormon Church is asking its members to throw their money behind Prop. 8. Michael Mitchell, a gay ex-Mormon who now works as the advocacy and planning specialist of Equality Federation, the national alliance of state-based LGBT rights organizations, says that the head of the Church and his council have encouraged members to contribute what has already amounted to about $9 million to the “Yes on 8” campaign. “Some individuals have given $50,000, while driving a broken Civic and raiding their kids’ college funds,” says Mitchell.

A small group of gay Mormons does try to effect change without leaving the Church through an organization called Affirmation, which meets throughout the country, including in New York. But many fed up Mormons just choose to leave. Others stick to Evergreen therapy, which, Utley says, turned into a “big hangout, with guys who attempt to date women, but go there for years.” And there are those who choose to end their lives rather than live with “same-gender attraction”; the highest gay suicide rate in the country is among Mormons.

Mitchell remembers hearing about Matis’s death in 2000. “It was heartbreaking. There’s a really big pain you feel when you’re told you have no place in the eternities. You want that pain to end.” Matis prayed for the pain to end until his knees could take no more.

Missa Solemnis, or the Play About Henry is at TBG Theatre Thu 30–Nov 22.