Beware Brother Willy's Spores...

I know I'm gonna run out and buy a rubber suit and gas mask...

From City Weekly:

Deep End | Affirmed and Denied: LDS leaders track sexual orientation to busy gay spores

By D.P. Sorensen
Posted 08/21/2008

The Mormon church moved swiftly to quell suspicions that anti-gay bias was behind its cancellation of a scheduled meeting with Affirmation, a group of Mormon gay activists. Church spokesman Elder Scott Trotter (not to be confused with Scott Rotter, the legendary gay porn star), in a hastily called news conference in the lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, assured reporters that church authorities have nothing against gay people personally, nor were they afraid that meeting with Affirmation would undermine their efforts to stop gay marriages in California.

“Gay people are good people, as long as they don’t do gay things,” said Elder Trotter. “We are not, in principle, opposed to meeting with gay people, and at some point in the future, when sufficient safeguards have been established—such as Plexiglas dividers, latex gloves and surgical masks—we will be happy to address their concerns with love in our hearts and protective gear on our bodies.”

Elder Trotter then distributed copies of a monograph written by a team of BYU professors recently published in the Journal of Innovative Etiology. Titled “Spores and Sexual Orientation,” the extensively footnoted scholarly article lays out recent research on the genesis of same-gender attraction.

“I ask you all to read the article with an open mind and an open heart. But whatever you do, don’t read the article within several kilometers of any known gay person, or even someone you suspect of having homoite tendencies. For as you will see, the evidence is overwhelming that homonian attraction is caused by a haploid spore with high motility. How these spores get airborne is not exactly known at this time, but we do know that they are exceedingly contagious.

“Our scientists speculate that spores, which we have now identified as ballistospores, not zygospores as previously hypothesized, are discharged from what we technically call the fruiting body, and somehow travel to bodily apertures of unsuspecting normal folks who innocently happen to be in the vicinity.

“These ballistospores could be expelled from the fruiting body by sneezes, coughs, singing, burps or flatulations. We think spores coming to rest on external surfaces, though still motile, are not as contagious as those spores that have become aerosolized by bodily functions of an expulsive character.

“Based on our research, we prefer at this time not to have any physical contact with any gay-type persons, as even your basic handshake, or even your grip patriarchal, might prove deleterious to persons exposed to gay spores. We are open to some form of teleconferencing, but we want to rule out completely the possibility that the gay spore might be digitized, inadvertently or otherwise, and thus present a danger to innocent teleconferencers.”

Elder Trotter was interrupted at this point by a reporter whose rudeness marked him as someone not conversant with our genteel culture. He asked about the efficacy of Mormon undergarments—which have been proven to repel stinging insects, bullets, knives, arrows and Tasers—in repelling aerosolized ballistospores. Elder Trotter replied that the Lord didn’t know about ballistospores back when he invented sacred undergarments. The persistent reporter then posed a question about the omniscience of the Lord, at which point Elder Trotter replied that the Lord moves in mysterious ways, etc, etc., and then brought the news conference to a conclusion.

In a related development, Deseret Book has just announced the fall publication of Turnaround, (not to be confused with Mitt Romney’s book of the same title), a meticulous account of examples of successful reparative therapy in Mormon history. Written by Parmel J. Pratt, an archivist in the church history department, who is better known as a gifted scrapbooker, Turnaround is an inspiring tale of gay Mormons who stopped doing gay things.

There are numerous stories of gay Mormons who straightened themselves out, but the tale that will surely delight Mormons, homo and hetero alike, is the saga of LeGrand P. Willy, who cut a wide swath through the unmarried male population of Zion in the 1850s. “Because of polygamy, there are all these dreamy bachelors around town,” Brother Willy once told a friend. “It’s like a perpetual picnic!”

Succumbing to the powerful spell of Brigham Young, the flamboyant Willy went on to become the Lion of the Lord’s personal barber and masseuse. In an interesting historical sidelight, Mr. Willy is credited with originating the “Mormon shoulder massage,” the now universal greeting between members of the Melchizedek priesthood. It is unknown whether or not Mr. Willy’s spores are still floating around town.

D.P. Sorensen writes satire for City Weekly.