By his own admission, in his latest blog post: On Renarin and Rlain. He says the post is addressed “toward my more conservative readership.” However, he also calls himself “an ally to LGBT+ people” and boasts about writing the “first openly gay men [in] the Wheel of Time.” When discussing Christianity and his own Latter-day Saint faith, he makes repeated appeals to “empathy” and “respect,” without addressing the Bible’s clear condemnation of sexual sin. He also does not mention the Family Proclamation, which clearly lays out his own church’s position on homosexuality, transgenderism, and gay marriage.
In other words, Brandon basically told his conservative readers “I hear you, but you’re wrong.” He implies that any conservative Christian who has concerns with the gay romance in Wind and Truth is lacking in empathy and respect. He also implies that by voicing their concerns, they are dividing the world into “us” vs. “them” and betraying a key tenet of their own Christian faith.
If Brandon genuinely wanted to allay the concerns of his conservative readers, he would have acknowledged the Family Proclamation and Biblical standards of sexual morality. He would have discussed the gay romance of his latest book in the context of such standards. Then, he would have presented an argument similar to Andrew Klavan’s: that conservative art is not the same as conservative life. Good art must provide an honest and truthful representation of life. It should not glorify or promote those aspects of life that are evil. Brandon starts to make the first half of that argument, in discussing how Tracy Hickman portrayed gay characters in his books, but he fails to follow it up. He doesn’t explain how making a gay romance essential to the plot of Wind and Truth serves the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Brandon doesn’t seem to trust his conservative Christian readers to be able to separate the sin from the sinner. He also refuses to acknowledge the lived experience of his gay and lesbian readers who have chosen to live morally pure and faithful Christian lives. Like Brandon, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of the most inspiring members of the church for me are those who struggle with same-gender attraction but still live true to their testimonies. I imagine it must feel pretty lonely at times like this, when their brother in Christ has chosen to side with those who preach the false gospel of pride, equity, and self-worship, instead of the gospel of the One who declared “Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be Thine forever.”
Has Brandon denied his faith? I’m not Brandon’s bishop, nor am I his eternal judge. It’s important to remember that the church is not a place for perfect people. I do think there ought to be a place in the church for self-described LGBT+ allies, so long as they sustain the leaders—and the doctrine—of the church. But if he hasn’t crossed the line, he’s certainly standing a lot closer to it than I ever would.
My personal testimony is that the Family Proclamation is inspired of God, and that the men who wrote and signed their names to it are prophets, seers, and revelators. It teaches true principles about the family and sexual morality. We are all children of God, gays and lesbians included, and that makes us all brothers and sisters regardless of how we choose to live. At the same time, Christ didn’t suffer and die for us so that we could continue in our sins. If the Family Proclamation is true, affirming homosexuality is not an act of love, no matter how empathetic it may be. Christ had empathy for the woman caught in adultery, but because He loved her, He also commanded her to “go, and sin no more.”
On a personal level, I feel frustrated and disappointed by Brandon’s recent turn. I count Brandon as an early mentor—in fact, it was Brandon’s class that inspired me to pursue writing as a career. I haven’t spoken with Brandon in years, but I do still count him as a friend. If I could sit down with him I would ask him about the people he’s surrounded himself with. They seem to be leading him in a bad direction, since he seems to have grown out of touch.
Has he betrayed his conservative readers? Yes, I think he has, and that he’s making a big mistake by doing so. One of the things that set him apart until now was the fact that his books are very clean. His fans may argue that Renarin and Rlain’s romance is also clean, but as a conservative reader, it feels more like a camel’s nose peeking under the tent. In a world of drag queen story hour, pornographic gay pride parades, and genital mutilation of children, is it even possible to have a clean gay romance? I think not. To paraphrase Brandon, as much as we may long for the days where there was no slippery slope, maybe that world never existed. Maybe there will always be an instinct to divide the world into the “clean” and the “queer.”
So let me just say this: whatever the stories that Brandon wants to tell, I can no longer trust that they’ll be the kind I’ll want to read. He could still turn around, of course, and I genuinely hope that he does. But reading between the lines, it seems that this turn toward the woke is not a new direction from him. It seems to be something that he’s contemplated for some time. I’ll still read the rest of his secret projects and keep my signed copies of the original Mistborn trilogy. But I’m going to DNF the Stormlight Archive, and probably won’t buy his future books.
Brandon ends his blog post by saying that one of his primary goals in life is to be more empathetic. This is what motivates him to write: because it’s how he explores the world. I, too, feel compelled to explore the world through my stories, but my primary goal is to pursue the truth. Those two goals aren’t always in conflict, but when they are, I think the pursuit of truth should be higher. The pursuit of truth ultimately leads us to love one another more fully and more meaningfully than the pursuit of empathy does. It saddens me that Brandon disagrees.
