Chad and Betsy, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g

first comes loves, then comes marriage, then comes Betsy pushing a baby carriage!

When I was a young kid, I didn’t know anything about sex, but I learned pretty quickly that the world revolved around it.

I was born a boy in 1978. I had a penis between my legs, and the doctors wrapped me in blue. My parents had one older boy at home and four girls. Having a penis meant a blue blanket. It meant trucks and tools and balls. My parents held their little boy and they looked forward to a future in Mormonism for me, one where I would follow all of the rules and rites of passage. It was a long path of success and worthiness for boys in my religion.

I was only a few weeks old when my father held me in his arms and, surrounded by other male Priesthood holders at church, he gave me a name and a blessing. I was named Chad Deloy. I was blessed that I would be a worthy and believing Mormon all of my life. I was told I would get the Priesthood one day, that I would be an obedient son of God, that I would go on a mission and eventually marry in the temple. I was told that I would serve in the church my entire life. And if I did that, followed all the rules, then I’d get to have a worthy wife sealed to me, and we would have children, and after I died, I had the potential to be a god myself. All that because I was born with a penis. The women in my family must have looked on, remembering their own promised blessings, to be wives and mothers, attached forever to their husbands.

Like anyone else, I can’t remember much about those first few years. I know Mom doted on me a lot. The older kids had so much chaos going on, but I was the baby. I was chubby and snuggly, and Mom wrote music as she rocked me back and forth. It was the early 1980s, which meant watching Disney movies on VHS tapes, and getting up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons. It meant storybooks from the library. And I learned very early on that men were the warriors, women were the princesses, and every story seemed to end with marriage and love. Men and women made husbands and wives and then they had kids, this was the format for everything.

And at church, the stories from the scriptures were the same. It was all about love and virtue, obedience and worthiness. But the rules were clear long before I understood them. Save yourself for marriage. Sex only between a man and a woman, and only when married. Worthiness was related to virtue. Don’t lust, no heavy-petting, no pornography, no masturbation, no homosexuality. Man and wife, then children. And whatever sex was fit into all of that.

As early as three and four, I can remember comments about all of these things. “He’s such a handsome young man, he’ll make a woman very happy one day.” Talk on the playground turned to discussion about who you had crushes on, and who was going steady or “going out” with who, and who had boyfriends or girlfriends. Every adventure was a mimic of what media we were consuming. Men fought the villains and girls were to be saved.

I was five when I started realizing I was different from other kids. The other boys were into sports and competitive play. They were aggressive, they teased, they played rough. I was more into story-telling, nurturing, art, reading, and I preferred playing with the girls at recess. And when the boys talked about crushes on girls, I found myself with crushes on the boys. But I knew even then that talking about it would mean getting teased. I remember pretending to have crushes on a girl in my class named Betsy, a red-head with freckles. My brother told me I had to kiss a girl in order to be a ‘real man’, so I pretended like I had kissed Betsy, and he’d punched me on the arm to congratulate me. All of that was there as early as kindergarten. The subtle messages were hitting from every front, from the media, from church, from culture. It was simple. Boys and girls, sex and marriage and family. It was all around me, constantly.

But I didn’t see much of it at home. My oldest siblings dated, had boyfriends. My mom and dad were married, and that meant they were together forever, for all of life and into eternity, as the Mormons taught it. But I could tell early on that they didn’t seem happy. Dad cried a lot and laid on the floor all the time. He also lost his temper a lot. And Mom was so focused on the kids, on being busy, cooking meals and cleaning house, spending special time with all of us. My little sister was born in 1982, and she had another baby to focus on, making seven of us in total. Mom and dad didn’t touch much. The family was busy, school and church, homework and chores. It was a chaotic and busy life. It was just the way of things.

Marriage and then “Happily Ever After.” And I realized early on that we were the Happily Ever After. All those Disney stories ended with that. “And they lived happily ever after.” This was that. Dad went on his mission, he and mom got married in the temple, and then they built a family. This was it. This was what happened to Snow White and Cinderella and all the others: they got married and had families and then went forward with all of that. So I didn’t know what sex was, but the world revolved around it. And this, well, this was it.

And right around that time, my brother started touching me behind closed doors. And over the next few years, I developed a very different understanding.