A Prayer of Deliverance for Queer Church Members

 

After reports of bullying on BYU's campus towards Sarah Coyne, a professor who mentioned her transgender child in class, let's not have any confusion about what thay bullying represents and where it comes from.

You cannot teach the pure love of Christ for the LGBTQ+ community at the same time you exclude them from church fellowship.

You cannot talk out of both sides of your mouth and expect anything but cruelty, bullying, and ugliness to follow.

You do not reap grapes of thorns or figs from thistles.

Those who sow in hatred reap in violence.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Matthew 7:18-19

LGBTQ+ exclusion is an evil fruit from the corrupt tree of exclusionary church policies. Those policies are good for nothing but to be hewn down and cast into the fire.

We have been divided against our own at the behest of evangelical Christianity for long enough. Anyone who insists we do this to our own is no friends to us.

We are the house that cannot stand when it is divided.

How many more of our people, our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, our friends and neighbors, our family members in Christ have to suffer and die before we see the error of our ways?

How many more will it take for the error to become apparent?

I plead that deliverance comes quickly.

Lord, thy people perish. 

Give us the courage and strength to run the hatred of strangers from our midst.

Let words of unkindness and violence turn to ash in the mouths of those who speak them. 

May all the inner vessels of those who have steeped malice be scoured clean. 

May those who have made the cups of others bitter be forced to drink to the dregs themselves.

Bring all conspiracies, all tyranny, all oppression into the light where all may see plainly.

Let those who deal in secret have their names be known and spoken in truth from the rooftops in the light of day.

Let there be no peace in Zion until all may rest therein.

That is my prayer today and always. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

The Unimpressive Origins of Anti-Queerness in the LDS Church

"Sister Collins, why don't you believe being queer is a sin like the rest of the righteous, obedient Mormons?"

Because despite what you've been told, the rejection of LGBTQIA+ people is not a foundational gospel principle to Christianity. It's not part of some consistent, eternal sexual ethic that has been passed down to us unchanged since the dawn of time. There is no such consistent sexual ethic taught in scripture. Any biblical scholar with a decent grasp of Hebrew and Greek would be able to tell you that. What the Old Testament teaches about sex is not what Paul teaches in the New Testament, is not what the Book of Mormon teaches, is not what the Doctrine and Covenants teaches.

Sexual ethics change. They're one of the things in scripture most likely to change and morph according to the man-made cultures surrounding them. They've changed drastically within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints alone over the nearly-200 years the institution has been in the earth. The idea that Latter-day Saints would advocate for a strict sexual ethic that isn't subject to change is comically ridiculous. It's an untenable position for anyone in a religious community community that went from not polygamy, to polygamy, and back again—all in a 70 year period.

The idea that the current sexual ethic as it exists in the Church isn't subject to change to become inclusive to the LGBTQ+ community is nonsense. We have less authority than anyone else in Christianity to make that kind of assertion, which is why I'm continually baffled that our community has even tried at all.

The idea that homosexuality is sinful didn't enter the Church until after it showed up in the rest of Christianity in 1952 with the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. An edition, I'll point out, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not use. It was the first edition of the Bible to ever assert that the Bible explicitly condemned homosexuality. Before this point, no edition of any Bible that has ever been published interpreted or translated any of the texts to refer to homosexuality. While these perceptions existed culturally before this time, no one had ever gone so far as to translate the Bible in this way because such assertions and translations are completely inconsistent with the text.

Once the RSV team did include such a translation, an error they later tried to disavow, it became the source of these interpretations throughout the rest of Christianity. The Living Bible, the New International Version, and the New American Standard Bible all adopted this perspective from the RSV. While such doctrinal drift can't be traced through Latter-day Saint use of the King James Bible, we can review general conference talks to see how these line up with these perspectives and who introduced them. A full collection of indexed conference reports was uploaded by the Church History Museum to the Internet Archive in 2011, so this is not a difficult question to examine.

The first instance of this kind of queer condemnation, beginning with J. Reuben Clark in 1954, is in lockstep with conforming with the RSV's translation error. (Clark, Conference Report October 1954, pg. 79) It's also worth noting that the second condemnation, also from Clark in 1957, asserts that scriptural injunctions against "fornication" relate to men engaging in homosexual relationships, with a simultaneous admission that he isn't sure if those same passages included queer women or not. (Clark, Conference Report April 1957, pg. 87)

The idea that the Church's condemnation of its own queer community is an organized, ancient message that has been consistently taught and enforced throughout time the same way we do now is objectively false. We can point to our own conference reports and see the image of past church leadership guessing and speculating as to how to apply these condemnations from the rest of Christianity to our community. 

The question no one has been able to answer for me is why, if such messaging were inspired by God, there would be a need for guesswork or speculation on the part of J. Reuben Clark or anyone else.

I fully believe this is exactly the kind of Biblical mistranslation and manipulation we preach against. This is the apostasy I personally left evangelical Christianity to avoid. I don't believe in the rationalizations for anti-queerness in the Church for the same reason I don't believe the racial priesthood and temple restrictions were inspired, regardless of what any prophet or person has ever said about it: 

Because God is not a bigot.

God does not endorse bigotry. He doesn't endorse violence. He doesn't endorse division, ostracizing, indifference to suffering, the abandoning of children, bullying, and excluding people from his community because they are different. He doesn't participate in human rights abuses. Humans do that. God does not.

Jesus taught that it's "by their fruits" that we can know the truth of anything. We have had decades to see what the fruits of LGBTQIA+ exclusion from the Church have been. From mixed orientation marriages that fail to child abandonment, homelessness, conversation therapy, violence, and suicide. To say nothing of bullying and divisions in families throughout the Church.

The fruits of these policies of LGBTQIA+ exclusion have been evil because the policy is evil. The policy is evil because it came from the selfishness and ignorance of man instead of God.

And in that same breath, it needs to be said that you cannot collect good fruit from an evil tree. You cannot expect to teach people to love and accept queer people non-violently at the same time you close off participation to them in our community. Those two things cannot coexist together. You either follow the admonition of Peter when he taught that the command to take the gospel into all the earth includes all people, to call none of them unclean or common by condition off their birth, or you don't. (See Acts 10:14-15 and Acts 11:17) There is no room to negotiate people out of God's kingdom based on man-made prejudices. This is a lesson God has already taught.

 

I was in evangelical Christianity before I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I left that community because I didn't want any part of their teachings anymore. I have no loyalty to queer hatred any more than I have for original sin, infant baptism, or biblical inerrancy. My loyalty is to Jesus Christ—not the dungheap of human errors people have done in his name to justify their own actions, to amass power for themselves, or to lift themselves above others in vanity and pride.

 

I don't need a cafeteria lunch table to exclude people from to feel good about myself or to convince myself that God loves me. If that's something you need, that's not because of anything queer people have ever done to you. So stop blaming and hurting them and go to therapy.

Is the Holy Ghost also Heavenly Mother?

Some of my dearest friends believe the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother are the same. It's a valid question and discussion, and I thought I would share my perspective and reasoning for why I disagree.

You may think differently after all this. You may still think Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost. That's cool. I like being able to reason together, based on what we know and have personally experienced. You don't have to change what you believe based on what I've said. My purpose here isn't to say to anyone "You're wrong." It's to add another way of thinking about things to the discussion. Add what makes sense to you to your cafeteria tray. Or don't. It's your call.

The reason I don't share this belief is because the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without a body, as described in D&C 130:22. That's how they can perform the essential functions of the Holy Ghost. D&C 130 explains that for the Holy Ghost to perform the function assigned to them by God, being disembodied is a crucial part of that.

Heavenly Mother is a resurrected, exalted being. For her to be a co-creator, equal with God and in full possession of her powers, she must possess a perfected body. 

One of the unique messages of Mormonism is that exaltation is inseparable from having a resurrected, exalted body. From D&C 76 and its descriptions of "bodies celestial" to the description in Abraham 3 of those who "keep their second estate" having "glory added upon their heads for ever and ever." Removing Heavenly Mother from her embodied physical state would put her into an unequal relationship with our Father in Heaven, incomplete and subject to him. That's why the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not."

He, She, or They?

This point, however, does raise an interesting question I've never considered before. Is it appropriate for someone who has never received a body, and therefore never experienced gender in the flesh, to be assigned as male?

The Gift, Walter Rane

 

I've explored the relationship between biological sex and gender before. Being familiar with that perspective will help elaborate my comments here.

I know what the family proclamation says about gender being eternal. The language being used there has expanded and changed since 1995 when the family proclamation was given. When they said gender is eternal, they were referring to what we would now describe as biological sex. The family proclamation asserts that biological sex is eternal.

Gender is completely separate from biological sex. Gender is a social construct that is shaped by our own responses to our biological sex. Does our sex match how we perceive ourselves and our lived experiences in our own bodies, or are they incongruent with each other? That's not something that can be determined just by looking at someone. While leaders and the authors of scripture in times past have seen the Holy Ghost in vision, described him as male, or quoted Christ in teaching the Holy Ghost is male, these are secondhand accounts. I don't consider them definitive sources

Some of my dearest friends believe the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother are the same. It's a valid question and discussion, and I thought I would share my perspective and reasoning for why I disagree.

You may think differently after all this. You may still think Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost. That's cool. I like being able to reason together, based on what we know and have personally experienced. You don't have to change what you believe based on what I've said. My purpose here isn't to say to anyone "You're wrong." It's to add another way of thinking about things to the discussion. Add what makes sense to you to your cafeteria tray. Or don't. It's your call.

The reason I don't share this belief is because the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without a body, as described in D&C 130:22. That's how they can perform the essential functions of the Holy Ghost. D&C 130 explains that for the Holy Ghost to perform the function assigned to them by God, being disembodied is a crucial part of that.

Heavenly Mother is a resurrected, exalted being. For her to be a co-creator, equal with God and in full possession of her powers, she must possess a perfected body. One of the unique messages of Mormonism is that exaltation is inseparable from having a resurrected, exalted

Some of my dearest friends believe the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother are the same. It's a valid question and discussion, and I thought I would share my perspective and reasoning for why I disagree.

You may think differently after all this. You may still think Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost. That's cool. I like being able to reason together, based on what we know and have personally experienced. You don't have to change what you believe based on what I've said. My purpose here isn't to say to anyone "You're wrong." It's to add another way of thinking about things to the discussion. Add what makes sense to you to your cafeteria tray. Or don't. It's your call.

The reason I don't share this belief is because the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without a body, as described in D&C 130:22. That's how they can perform the essential functions of the Holy Ghost. D&C 130 explains that for the Holy Ghost to perform the function assigned to them by God, being disembodied is a crucial part of that.

Heavenly Mother is a resurrected, exalted being. For her to be a co-creator, equal with God and in full possession of her powers, she must possess a perfected body. One of the unique messages of Mormonism is that exaltation is inseparable from having a resurrected, exalted body. From D&C 76 and its descriptions of "bodies celestial" to the description in Abraham 3 of those who "keep their second estate" having "glory added upon their heads for ever and ever." Removing Heavenly Mother from her embodied physical state would put her into an unequal relationship with our Father in Heaven, incomplete and subject to him. 

That's why the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not." 

body. From D&C 76 and its descriptions of "bodies celestial" to the description in Abraham 3 of those who "keep their second estate" having "glory added upon their heads for ever and ever." Removing Heavenly Mother from her embodied physical state would put her into an unequal relationship with our Father in Heaven, incomplete and subject to him. 

That's why the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not." 

of this information because they weren't written, preserved, or translated by impartial bastions of gender equity.

Because the Holy Ghost has never had a body, they don't know what their gender is. This is why we refer to the Holy Ghost as a personage of spirit, rather than a person. It's also why I think the most accurate pronoun to use for the Holy Ghost is "they," rather than "he." There are too many ways that biological sex and gender can manifest in humans for me to ever assume I know what it'll be for someone who has never even been mortal before. That's a decision the Holy Ghost has to make for themselves once they receive a body. 

So what is it going to take for me to feel like I know the Holy Ghost enough to definitively assign pronouns to them? The same way I do with anyone else: by having the person introduce themselves to me and tell me firsthand what pronouns they prefer.

We don't have anything like that from the Holy Ghost. It's unwise to misrepresent the scriptures we have as if they are. And if the idea of the Holy Ghost deciding, in the actual experience of being embodied, to come out as queer bothers you, it might be time ask yourself why.

Sex and Gender Identity in Scripture

One of the reasons people in the Church give for not wanting to affirm transgender, intersex, gender fluid, and non-binary members of our community is because of how these perceptions of gender allegedly conflict with scripture. So, let's take it apart, starting with some of the important terms on this front it will be helpful to define.

As I looked at each term on their list, I paused on the definition they've given for Binary: "The gender binary is a system of viewing gender as consisting solely of two identities and sexes, man and woman or male and female."

Maybe this is obvious to other people, or has been covered elsewhere before. But seeing male and female vs. man and woman written like that caught my attention. These terms are separate. They refer to sex and gender distinctly, separately.

You know what else does that? The creation story of Adam and Eve.  

Notice how Moses 2:27 refers to sex, male and female.

Gender isn't introduced until the next chapter, when Adam names Eve, "Woman." Which, yeah. How are you going to have gender before the first woman has even been created? It's a distinction and separation that is also maintained in the Genesis accounts of chapters 1 and 2.

Here's the interesting part. Nowhere, is any of this exchange, does God state that sex and gender are intrinsically tied together—that they must or will always line up as male and man, or female and woman. It's not a necessary part of the story as written.

Adam and Eve, the record makes clear, are cisgender. But there is no scriptural imperative of any kind to assume that this is the immutable order of things for all creation, according to God. There is simply no evidence for that assertion here.

I've read these stories countless times, heard them recounted countless times in the temple as both a patron and an ordinance worker, and I've never seen those layers of meaning before. It's a good reminder of what my husband says to me all the time: God can't steer a parked car. Until we ask for these insights, we may never see them on our own.

 

But wait! There's more.

Look at D&C 93:29. In our pre-earth life, we were spirit beings, living in the presence of God. And we were made of "intelligence," right? 

 

Notice how it says intelligence can't be made or created?

Hold that thought, and go back with me to Genesis 1.

 

What does it say God did with it biological sex? What's the verb? 

 

Created.

 

He made us male and female. But D&C 93 says intelligence, the substance from which we're made, cannot be formed or made. 

 

What does this mean? What does it tell us?

 

It means intelligence, like priesthood, has no gender. 

 

It means our biological sex begins when we are organized out of intelligence.

 

We are eternal beings, but biological sex and gender are not eternal.

"But Sister Collins! The Family Proclamation says the opposite!"

Yes, it does. It's almost like the Family Proclamation has been superimposing evangelical Christianity's political interpretation of gender and sexuality on the human family that isn't supported by scripture. And in a choice between evangelical Christianity and the health and safety of our own members, it's pretty clear whose side we should be taking.

But I'm just a returned missionary who has been a Sunday School teacher more times than I can even count. What do I know?

Of Course Not Everyone is Straight in Heaven!

One popular theory in the Church regarding homosexuality is that those who experience it will have those desires healed/cured/removed during the resurrection. This idea has been repeated on all levels of the Church, at every level of leadership. It's worth deconstructing for several reasons, not the least of which because of the harm it does to the LGBTQ+ community and the doctrinal inconsistencies with our own scriptural canon.

I'm bringing this up because I've spent the better part of today deconstructing this idea, as part of my project to revise the Topical. Because LGBTQ+ members, their families, and friends encounter this position so much, our community is remiss when we don't address it.

Let's look at the mental and theological framework surrounding the idea that we can "pray the gay away."

1. Homosexuality as an attraction is not a sin. It requires no repentance. 
2. Homosexuality is a deviation from "the Plan" of God. It must be resolved. 
3. Jesus Christ has the power to "fix" homosexuality.
4. Jesus Christ has the desire to "fix" homosexuality. 
5. He will express that desire and power through the resurrection--presumably because homosexuality is part of some physical dysfunction within the body that Christ needs to "heal."

Examining each one of these points in isolation, they each fall apart under closer scrutiny because the house of we're trying to build for our LGBTQ friends and family members cannot stand. So let's take them apart.

Homosexuality as an attraction is not a sin. It requires no repentance.  

The first point really should be more salient to people. If there is no sin in being attracted to the opposite sex, how can it possibly follow that acting on that desire is wrong? Especially in light of what Christ said in Matt. 5:27-28:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Sexual transgressions do not take place when we do something wrong. They happen the moment we even have the desire. If we've reached a logical place where our leadership advocates that homosexual attraction is not a sin, it should follow that acting on it isn't either. The idea that a desire can be separated from the sin is inconsistent with what Christ taught at the Serman on the Mount.

If the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is prepared to teach that same-sex desire isn't sinful, it's because we're ready to accept that acting on it isn't sinful either.

Homosexuality is a deviation from "the Plan" of God?  

Second point: if homosexuality needs to be resolved by Christ as part of his plan, there should be evidence somewhere in the scriptures that he believes this. This is especially true for Latter-day Saints because we have an open scriptural canon. If anyone should have evidence of God's explicitly stated, scriptural condemnation of homosexuality, it should be us.

What we find instead is that our expanded scriptural canon doesn't ever address homosexuality. Not in the Book of Mormon. Not in the Doctrine and Covenants. Not the Pearl of Great Price. And it's not because addressing social and cultural issues directly is outside of their purview. In fact: here's a list of issues those scriptures did address/condemn directly, as a demonstration:

• Cannibalism
• Human sacrifice
• Slavery
• Sexism
• Overthrowing governments
• Unjust laws that hold people on unequal ground in society
• The Nephite monetary system of coinage
  

The closest thing we have, in terms of modern revelation that condemns homosexuality, is the Family Proclamation of 1995. And given that we haven't voted on that as a church, it isn't part of the scriptural canon. It's not scripture. It's inappropriate to call it scripture because it hasn't undergone the process to become scripture. And my personal feeling as to why it has never undergone that process is because it would never pass.

So where did the idea that the scriptures condemn homosexuality come from? From outside of our community in the fraught exercise of Biblical translation. And what's more, it wasn't presented as a scriptural interpretation for the first time until the production of the the Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Protestants in 1946. The idea that the Bible condemns homosexuality by name or with that specific intent is not ancient in origin.

In fact, the people who saw the introduction of that idea into Christianity are still living and actively dismantling the harm from that mistake today.

 

The unique message of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the world is we don't take our cues on scriptural interpretation from the rest of Christianity. I have no loyalty to this interpretation of scripture because it didn't originate in my community, doesn't exist in any of our scriptures, and is best understood through the lens of apostasy creeping into the Church from those with agendas to cause harm to our people for their own political gains.

Jesus Christ has the power and desire to fix Homosexuality?

These last three points all converge together, so let's just dive in. If Jesus Christ has the power and desire to fix homosexuality, there should also be no sign of any scriptural evidence that contradicts that assertion. Under no circumstances should we see God being as open armed to as many people as possible, complete with mission statements committing himself to being way more inclusive than we're prepared to be.

Note these verses in 2 Ne. 26:24-28:

He layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him.

Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price.

Hath he commanded any that they should depart out of the synagogues, or out of the houses of worship? Behold, I say unto you, Nay.

All men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden. 

Then of course there's John 13:35:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

And who could forget James 1:5, the scripture that we present to the world as the core, defining ideological pillar of our faith:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

I could keep going, but suffice it to say: we could put forth into the world that God endorses us when we read these scriptures with an unspoken caveat that the LGBTQ+ community isn't included, asserting that they don't get to claim the same belonging and acceptance in the community as straight members do.

Or, in the more likely scenario, we can accept that some in our community have a reading comprehension problem with the world "all."

In conversations I've had with other Latter-day Saints on this subject who are possessive of their ability to withhold support from the LGBTQ+ community, I've noticed a certain fondness of appealing to the Law of Moses. I can't help but ask myself what that has to do with anything when the demands of the law were answered through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It's not as if God delivered the unmistakable message to Peter and the entire Christian world that "what God hath cleansed, that call not thou common." (see Acts 10:15)

 

Jesus will "fix" Queerness through the Resurrection?

Let's get to the main point of this thread. Is Jesus Christ going to fix same-sex attraction in the resurrection? Do we have a doctrinal ground to stand on when we assert this is going to happen?

The answer, as it turns out, is no. Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world. And even he doesn't get to use the Resurrection to fundamentally alter someone's identity or divine outcome. And let's dig into this idea here because there are two ways of looking at it:

• Homosexuality as a physical mortal flaw attached to the body, and 
• Homosexuality as an intrinsic part of someone's identity. You might say, someone with a queer soul.

Now, anyone who has ever bothered to listen to queer members of the Church would know that "queer body, straight soul" is not consistent with their experience. I've chosen to take those folks at their word because as the ones with the lived experience, they're going to be the ones with the rights to that revelation. But even if someone disagrees with the idea of queer souls being a thing, let's dig into scriptures to see what they say about eternal identity formation.

"That same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." Alma 34:34

In context, this verse is talking about sin. Can Christ actively prevent us from the consequences of our actions viathe resurrection, as it relates to sin? Answer: No. But the language here, I think, reaches beyond just sin. It speaks to eternal identity formation in every context, including the one we're talking about.

Go with me also to Alma 40:23:

The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame.

And Alma 41:2:

I say unto thee, my son, that the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of man should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself.

Is it possible to read these verses and believe God gets to tamper with the fundamental parts of our identity, the sum total of who we were born as and what we decided to make of ourselves--whether as a consequence of biology or identity?

If we're reading these verses honestly, I think it's clear that it doesn't matter how you choose to interpret when and how homosexuality becomes a part of a person's lived experience. Whether it's a biological force or of someone's eternal identity, Jesus cannot and does not cancel out who we are in favor of making into who he wants us to be instead.

Read those verses in Alma 41 again. If God was in the business of  overhauling people's personalities as part of the resurrection, why are we using the word "restore" here?

The role of Christ in the resurrection and the judgment is going to be to perfecting whatever version of myself I hand over to him. He is going to work with whatever raw materials I gave him. Which only seems fair, seeing as that's what I've been doing with all the lived experiences he has given to me.

We don't get to completely redefine everything we know about Resurrection in order to erase queerness from the Kingdom of God. We certainly don't get to do that to perpetuate unacceptable attitudes and behaviors towards our LGBTQ friends, neighbors, and family members today. And if we insist on continuing in that line of thinking, we need to remember one thing: Jesus isn't going to magically fix that about us before we go into our final interview. He will restore that crusty attitude right back to us, where it belongs.

We each need to think about the person we want to be when we meet Jesus again. What do I want him to restore to me from my life here on earth? Now is the time I have to decide who I want to be. The last thing I want him to ask me in that day is "Why were you so comfortable with the suffering of others?"

Because I'll tell you what. I can't think of a single good answer to that question.