The air is cold, but that isn’t why I’m shaking.
The text came while I was picking an outfit for a job interview later that day. “Did you hear about the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?” my friend asked.
I was confused. We were both Mormon, so what could the MoTab have possibly done to make her reach out to me specifically? The answer came a moment later when she sent a link to the Mormon Newsroom.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir had agreed to sing at the inauguration of Donald J. Trump.
My chest tightened and my legs went soft. I dropped into the chair beside me as half-finished sentences swirled in my head: This can’t . . . He doesn’t deserve . . . But why . . .
The night Trump was elected, I experienced my first panic attack. I was driving back from a friend’s house when suddenly I was screaming. The more I tried to stop, the louder the screams became. I pulled over to the side of the highway and for five convulsive minutes allowed the hurt and fear to erupt out of me.
I thought I had my faith community to fall back on—a faith that seemed to reject the tribalism and otherization that had coursed through Trump’s campaign. My conservative coworkers, Mormons all, had refused to vote for him. True, Utah had gone Trump, but he hadn’t won the majority of the popular vote. And following the unveiling of the Access Hollywood tapes, the Deseret News had called on Trump to withdraw from the race. But now, looking down at my phone, I felt like an idiot for thinking any of that meant anything.
Sitting there half-dressed, I weighed my options. Would letter-writing work, or a visit to my local church leaders? It didn’t seem likely. I learned this the hard way after the Church decided to bar children of LGBT couples from baptism until they were eighteen. I thought I was getting somewhere when a stake president offered to meet with me. As I sat in his palatial home tucked away in a gated community, I explained to him and his wife that LGBT Mormon youth were being pushed from their homes and trafficked on the streets, and he seemed to take it seriously.
“Send me more information,” he said. So I sent him an email stocked with details and contacts. “Thanks,” he responded. “Will look into this.” I never heard from him again.
There was one other thing I hadn’t tried, even though it’d crossed my mind many times before. The worldwide headquarters for the LDS Church was two miles from my house: I could just go there. In the past, I had swatted such thoughts away as nothing more than a cathartic fantasy. Not this time. I jumped up and, pulling on the first sweater I saw, headed for the door.
Ten minutes later I was standing in front of the pillar-lined Church Administration Building, my nerves and knees rattling. Did I think my proactivity would land me a meeting with the prophet? No. But what else could I do? I needed to be heard, by anyone.
Taking a deep breath of December air, I use all my bodyweight to pull the heavy glass door open. Be polite; be firm, I think to myself. I only make it another foot: The second pair of doors doesn’t have handles, just thick panes of glass framed by brass. I push, but they refuse to budge.
“No,” I say to myself as I try a second and a third time. “No, no, no, no.”
A white telephone to my right rings. I freeze. It rings again. I pick it up.
“Can I help you?” a man asks from the other side of the glass doors.
An awkward silence follows as I scramble to piece together the explanation I practiced on the drive over. “My name is Tamarra,” I begin, watching his face through the glass. “I’m an active member.” I let this sink in before I continue. “I was wondering if there was any way I could possibly schedule a meeting with the prophet or his counselors.”
The man is gentle but firm as he suggests I reach out to my local leadership, following the chain of authority. And no, he can’t take a message—sorry.
I place the receiver back into its cradle. For a moment I just stand there, staring at the phone, before stepping back out into the cold. As I do, I think about what my gay, black friend told me the night of the election. “We don’t matter,” he said, his voice trembling. “You and I, we don’t matter.”
As a Mormon woman, I’m used to feeling this way. Maybe not that I don’t matter entirely, just that I matter less. I feel this every week I watch from the pew as boys as young as 16 infuse tap water and Wonder Bread with God’s grace. I feel this each time I read the Book of Mormon, where the women only ever play a supporting role to a glittering cast of male protagonists. I feel this in conversations with Mormon women, who fret over my ability to find a man. For these and other reasons, the sexism I encounter in the secular world has barely even registered for much of my life. Trump changed that. He didn’t just condone the abuse of women—he celebrated it. Worse, millions of Americans didn’t consider this disqualifying. And now the Choir was going to sing for him.
Our leaders, they’re not women, I’d told myself on the drive over. They don’t get what this means. If only I could talk to them, explain how much it hurts.
I shiver as I watch a man I vaguely recognize as one of the newer members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles enter the building through a side entrance. Seeing the marble walls absorb him, something snaps.
“Dammit,” I say to no one. “I matter.” Pushing through the first set of doors, I stand before the glass wall until I know I have the secretary’s wary attention. I point emphatically at the phone and wait for it to ring.
“Yes . . . ?”
“Look,” I say. “You and I both know I will never get past my local leaders.” I pause as what started as a few tears swell into a sob. “I have been loyal to this church through everything. I served a mission even though I developed health problems I’ll never recover from. I pay my tithing and go to the temple. If you could just ask them for me what I’m supposed to tell my black friends, or my Muslim friends, or my gay friends, or my Latino friends, or all the women I know who have been sexually assaulted—if you could just ask the prophet and his counselors what I’m supposed to tell them now that the Choir is singing for Trump, that would be great. Thanks,” I say and hang up the phone without waiting for a response.
Back outside I sit down on the cold, hard, marble steps. That can’t be it. I can’t accept that this is the end. I’m still sitting there, crying, fifteen minutes later when three men wearing suits and ear pieces approach me.
“You want to come down and talk to us?” asks the tall one with thinning brown hair.
I turn to look behind me, but I’m alone. That’s when I realize: Security is here for me. Oh my gosh, I think. I’m that person. I rise and make my way down the stairs, suddenly conscious of the size of my coat. Am I supposed to unbutton it to show I’m unarmed?
“What’s your name?” asks the same man.
“Tamarra,” I respond, my face dyed red with embarrassment. Why can’t I be like everyone else and just sign a damn petition or something I wonder as I take a swipe at the tears collecting at the base of my chin.
“Is that with a ‘m’ or an ‘n?’”
“An ‘m.’ Do you want my membership record number, too?” I’m joking, but they don’t seem to notice.
“That would be great,” he says in apparent relief.
I balk. “Wait, really?”
The man shifts uncomfortably. “Ma’am, I’m sure you don’t mean any harm, but—”
He stops as I reach into my purse. “Here,” I say, opening my wallet and pulling out the tan and gold card. The man to my left takes it and begins to write down the number on the back.
“I’m sure you understand that we get a little nervous when people come and sit on the stairs like that.”
“Like what?” I want to say. Instead I just stand there in defeated silence, a fresh batch of tears brewing. The man hands me back my card that proves I don’t drink alcohol or use tobacco, that I don’t have sex because I’m not married, and all the other things a person must do to own a card like that. I slip it into my pocket.
“Can I go?”
“Sure, yeah. Merry Christmas.”
It strikes me that he means it sincerely, but I’m too upset to respond. Pushing my way between them, I head for the crosswalk and down to the Church’s underground parking lot.
A few minutes later, I’m in my car, head pounding against my steering wheel. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I say with each pound. Around me lie Walmart receipts and old movie tickets, behind me a growing line of impatient cars.
“Lost ticket: $20,” the ticket machine reads.
The cars behind me begin to honk. I flash a middle finger out the window, because I guess once you’ve had Security called on you it’s a slippery slope. Letting out a sigh, I open my wallet and pull out the birthday money my grandparents had sent me. The machine eats it; the gate opens. I am free.