My name is Doug Marks, my family has been members of the church on both sides for many
generations and we've been active in the church ever since I was little.
Baptized when I was eight.
I met my wife, Sharon, in Provo while we were going to school.
I've served in the Young Men's a lot, as counselor in the bishopric, a couple times, and bishop
in the Westmond Ward, then got called to serve as a seminary teacher, I've been a seminary
teacher for about ten years, and then called to serve as the stake clerk which I served
in for about seven years, and then a couple months ago I got called to be the second counselor
in our Stake Presidency.
I'm Sharon Marks and I am a seventh generation Mormon, I have pioneer stock.
I grew up Mormon, I met my husband, as he said, while we were going to BYU.
I served a mission in the Connecticut Hartford Mission.
My callings have been in every auxiliary, in the primary, in Young Women's, I've spent
a lot of time in the Young Women Program, and in Relief Society and I am currently serving
as the first counselor in the Stake Relief Society Presidency.
We have three sons.
Spencer is our first.
He's married to a wonderful girl Stephanie.
Justin, our gay son, is an identical twin and his brother Greg is on serving a mission
in Aruba.
So I still remember the night that Justin came out to us.
I can remember we had all gone to be already, we had our usual family scriptures and prayers
and were climbing into bed and Justin came into our room and said, "Can you come and
talk to me down in the family room."
He handed us each a letter and the letter told us that he was gay.
He was so worried about telling us this.
As soon as we were finished, the first thing out of Doug's mouth was, "That doesn't change
how much we love you.
That doesn't change anything Justin."
Before I had children I was an interior designer, and I worked with a lot of designers, and
most of them were gay and so I didn't have any fear about who a gay person was but the
problem was trying to transition ourselves from who we thought he was into who he really was.
I think it was a lot harder for me, it took me a lot more adjusting and trying to figure
out what we should do.
I think Sharon was more comfortable with it more quickly, but really we didn't know a lot.
There were resources out there, but we didn't know about them.
At the time, I was our Stake Clerk.
It was right in the middle of the Boy Scouts of America trying to figure out what they
were going to do with gay scouts, and so in our Stake Presidency meetings, that had come
up quite a bit.
I just kinda had the feeling that, "Well if the scouts let all gays in, then I'll bet the church
is just going to leave the scouting program."
So then when I came back to our Presidency meetings after talking with Justin, after
Justin came out, all of a sudden it went from the gays out there to my son and I just had
to start to resolve all those things that I had thought that I knew weren't true about
my son, and so there were all these things that I had to start resolving in my mind.
So much time has gone into praying about how do I support my son and what am I supposed
to be doing in this whole plan.
The answer came really strong one night that just because I don't know what the plan is
for Justin doesn't mean that there isn't one.
God does have a plan for Justin and for all of his children no matter what their orientation may be.
It's up to me to just have the faith to be patient enough to see how that plan is going
to work out.
And so in the meantime, our job is just to love him.
Whenever I get worried about anything and I pray about it, the answer is always always,
"just love him," and that's a simple thing to do because he's so loveable.
I have been really lucky to have really awesome parents.
My being gay didn't change anything at all and that was huge for me.
I had a lot of time before my parents did to think about things and to study and to
find resources and my parents didn't have that time and so as soon as I came out they
were just thrown into this new life.
And so those disagreements and those learning experiences will happen, they do happen and
they will happen.
The most important thing is that when I had a disagreement with my parents, they made
sure that I knew that I was loved, like new that I was still so important to their lives,
and so that was really important to me as well.
So I was really lucky too to have parents that were able to raise me in an environment
where I wasn't susceptible to a lot of the things that a lot of LGBTQ+ kids were susceptible to.
I was never going to parties and getting so drunk and driving home drunk, really dangerous
things that, because LGBTQ+ people are so often alienated from their families and alienated
from their systems of support they often get into.
And so I think that was really important.
Probably the biggest thing I would say to other parents is just be patient and know
that God is there and he'll help you.
He'll help you.
A lot of the hard things we face is because we see life in a certain way, and if it doesn't
fit that, then it throws us into a tail loop and I think God wants to expand our vision,
and sometimes he uses things that are hard for us to do that.
I'm walking with all my wonderful family members and friends in the Sandpoint Stake as we learn
to be better people and more loving of all those around us.
I'll walk with all those who want to be a better support to those in the gay community
and want to love all of those as our own brothers and sisters.
We're the Marks family and we'll walk with you.
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