Cynus
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As an LGBT ex-Mormon, I couldn't help but feel immediately drawn to this documentary, Latter-Day Glory. You can learn more about it here: http://www.latterdayglorymovie.com/
It's currently in post-production, and will hopefully be released sometime next year. Here's a brief synopsis:
Jonathon Levi Powell, celebrity hair and makeup stylist, and Terry Blas, comic book artist and illustrator, both grew up in the Church of Latter Day Saints. While on a roadtrip journey of discovery, they’ll meet with former and current members of the LDS community including celebrities .Along the journey we’ll explore Terry’s life at home in Portland, OR with his partner Scott, and Jonathon’s life on the road living between New York City and Miami, with his partner Kai. We’ll interview Jonathon’s family, who have been extremely welcoming of his sexuality, and see his life growing up in Seattle. Jonathon will revisit, for the first time, the site of his mission trip in West Virginia and Terry will return to his site in The Bronx, NY. They’ll end the trip by catching a screening of “Book of Mormon” with a group of gay ex-Mormons discussing their futures and how it gets better. We’ll also go to the home of the LDS church in Salt Lake City, interviewing clergy and ex-gay Mormons while catching scenes from the gay nightlife in SLC. Both will look into the technicalities of having your name and records permanently removed from the church.
With the current rise of suicides in the gay LDS community, we’ll address the issue through stories from survivors and families that have lost children, family members and friends to this devastating epidemic and try to find solutions and outreach to end the suffering through interviews with politicians, activists and experts in this subject matter.
I was able to contact the Executive Producer, Brandon Deyette, and asked him how I could help with the project, since it's a matter close to my heart. He asked me to share the project and to also tell people about my own process of coming to learn that I was worthy of love despite what the church had told me.
And so, I've come here to do just that.
The truth is that I didn't love myself for a long time, and part of me still doesn't. Part of me still struggles with the feelings of complete unworthiness I embraced throughout my time as a Mormon. I have the most wonderful boyfriend in the world, the sweetest man I've ever known who treats me like I'm someone special. I don't know how much any of you are aware of our situation, so I'll act as if I'm telling the story for the first time. He's my favorite writer on the internet, the person who inspired me to get back into writing after nearly six years of avoiding it. He's a writer over at AwesomeDude and Codey's World, and some of you may be familiar with his work. He writes under the name "EleCivil", and if you haven't read his work, you should. I personally recommend Laika, We're going to come back to him in a little bit, but I want you to know where we're headed.
Plus, I can't stop talking about him, so there's that, too.
As a kid, the church pretty much consumed my life. Not by choice, mind you. In fact, I was rather resistant to the programming my family and community wanted to thrust upon me. I was always the kid who didn't do what he was supposed to do, who used his tithing money to buy ice cream on Sunday when I stayed home sick from church. But, that didn't stop my parents from trying their damndest to get me to conform. They were always preaching, always trying to convince me that I should behave as 'Heavenly Father would want me to behave'. It didn't stick, but the one thing that did stick was that if I didn't do as I was supposed to, I was sinning, and if I was sinning, I was bad.
I was ten(a couple months shy of eleven) when I first really noticed I saw things a bit differently than my peers. I'd already found myself in a number of exploratory situations with some of my male friends by that point, but at that age I had a best friend who made me acknowledge a few things. I won't go into details for obvious reasons, what with this being a public place and all, but after some physical exploration we ended up in a ridiculous fight over him wanting to go further and me stopping him. Part of me stopped him because I knew I wasn't ready, but there was also that nagging thought at the back of my mind that what I was doing was wrong. I heard my parents saying something about how only men and women who were married were supposed to do the things he wanted to do with me, and so I resisted those advances.
The argument was extremely brief, and he walked away from me in anger. I decided to go home and think about it, then planned to come back and talk it over with him later, but as soon as I made it home I was grounded. My parents wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything for three weeks (I'd ditched scouts to hang out with my best friend and also didn't tell my sister where I was for over four hours). By the time I had a chance to talk to him, he either wouldn't or couldn't talk to me. My memory is a bit fuzzy about how it ended, but he moved back in with his dad (He'd been living with his grandfather), and left the neighborhood, without me ever having a chance to have that conversation with him.
Memories are a funny thing. That memory twisted on me over the years. Little details changed and morphed to fit my evolving worldview. What I knew for certain was that this experience, this painful, unavoidable separation from my best friend (and someone who easily could have ended up as my first boyfriend), changed the way I saw things. The pain and unhappiness from the separation took on the form of a demon as I tried to rationalize why it had happened. During the next few years, as I went through puberty, I was preached to constantly about the evils of homosexuality, masturbation, pornography, and premarital sex, all of which I'd come to associate with my best friend and a number of boys since then. I knew what I'd felt back then, I tried to deny it but there was no use. I'd loved him as much as a ten-year-old could love another ten-year-old, and if those feelings were evil, then clearly I was evil.
The church hung over me like a shadow, and my earlier resistance to it shifted as I came to see myself as evil. Instead, I slowly came to latch onto the church as a lifeline, the only thing which could possibly rescue me from the darkness because, according to them, it was the only thing that could. I was depressed, suicidal, and wanted desperately to change who I was. I developed weight issues, something which I still struggle with. I developed an unhealthy addiction to pornography (Which, strangely, the Mormons are actually right that it can be addicting . . . I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day), and was looking for any way out I could find.
For a brief time, Buddhism offered a bit of stability to me, giving me a chance to get outside of my head by separating myself from desire, but whatever complex emotions I'd developed proved too strong, and as I approached the end of high school and missionary age (19 for the Mormons, for those who don't know), I nearly lost broke down completely. I was already evil, I knew that without a doubt. Nothing I'd done had changed anything, but now I was expected to serve a mission; I, the most evil person i knew, was expected to go out and preach a gospel I didn't fully believe because my family expected it of me. The only hope I had was that the mission would change me, that by doing this good thing I'd be able to free myself from my sexuality and finally be able to live a normal life.
I hoped God would heal me, so I would stop feeling that horrendous pain.
I served for two years in South Korea. I worked hard, but I slipped up time and time again. I couldn't get those thoughts out of my mind (Thankfully I never had a crush on any of my companions. that would've been a nightmare which probably would've killed me). By the end of my time as a missionary, I was every bit as attracted to men as I'd been before I left, only now I'd had two years of forced sexual repression to add onto the list of things affecting my mental state. When i came back I knew my days in the church were numbered; God had failed me, and I no longer believed.
Somehow I still made it almost a year until I learned that the Mormon church had spent tithing money, including money I'd contributed, during Proposition 8 in California. This was the final straw, the last nail in the 'Samuel's evil' coffin (There were other reasons I left the church, too, this was just the last). I was driving down the road with a friend of mine, and I remember narrowly avoiding an accident because the news had stunned me so terribly. I'd been raised on the claim(lie) that the church did not involve itself in politics(which I feel like an idiot for ever believing that). That Sunday I attended church for one of the last times, and I came home and told my parents I wasn't going to be attending anymore.
This story is already getting long, but I have to say that my parents' reactions were somewhat damaging to me, but not as damaging as I expected them to be. I expected to be thrown out of the house, to be disowned and told I was evil. They didn't do that, although my mother cried for a few months whenever she saw me and to this day still makes a point of mentioning how my disbelief hurts her. They both deny it, but I still feel disappointment and a bit of contempt whenever they look at me. One of the things I still struggle with is my relationship with them, and it's hard to see it any other way, especially since they now know about my sexuality, and, although they accept that I identify that way, I've never had the impression they fully accept me.
And that hurts, but it's not worth lying to myself over.
This is the part where things get better, but not before a little bit more of struggle.
After I left the church, things were hazy for awhile. There was a little bit of a high for awhile as I realized I'd finally stepped away from the chains which had bound me for so long. I started a new job, where I opened up to my coworkers about things I'd kept silent for years everywhere else, like my sexuality and a number of my political leanings. I finally told my three best friends about my sexual orientation (two of them pretty much already knew. Those three are the three reasons I survived high school and didn't kill myself, so thanks, guys!). They accepted me openly, and I had the beginnings of a support group. New job, great friends, and my heaviest secret now off my chest, I was able to start enjoying life.
That lasted until my new job ended, and I got sucked into nine months of unemployment, where I started to question if I was being cursed for my sins. I didn't want to believe that, but everything went wrong so quickly, and less than a year after I left the church, it was hard not to think that way. During this time, I went a little crazy to say the least. I was struggling to understand, to find meaning in my existence. I remembered my best friend from when I was ten, and I went to his grandfather's house since he still lived in my neighborhood. I learned my former best friend drove for a trucking company and in my warped way of thinking I latched onto that concept like the pseudo-lifeline of the church I'd latched onto before. I decided to become a commercial truck driver and join the same company.
First of all, I should never drive a semi . . . I get anxiety behind the wheel of anything larger than a minivan. But, I borrowed some money and somehow managed to get my CDL anyway. Then I went down to Phoenix for my orientation and new career as a truck driver for the company I'd had my sights set on for months.
Of course, once I was down there, I had a complete nervous breakdown because it was the wrong move for the wrong reasons. Once again, I was running from myself, from the darkness which had shrouded me since I'd first admitted my sexuality. By leaving my support network behind at home, I came face to face with my complete loneliness and had nowhere left to go to hide from it. A complete stranger, who I only know as Jim, helped me in that moment. We were sharing a hotel room while we both waited to be assigned to trucks. He's the first person who set me back on the right track when he taught me the most important lesson he knew.
If you spend your whole life doing something wrong for you, you'll spend your whole life unhappy, and that's the worst way to spend it.
I came back home with Jim's words fresh on my mind. I saw a counselor at my father's expense a few months later, and he gave me the next piece of the puzzle. I related everything I saw wrong with my life, how I 'should be in college', or how I 'should be doing something with my life', and he stopped me and said, "I want you to stop and notice how many times you've said the word 'should', and I want you to try something. For the next week, until we meet again, I want you to replace the word 'should' with 'could', and see what happens."
It was like a switch was turned on which hadn't been flipped for years. I began to see everything as a possibility, not an absolute. I came to see that there wasn't just one way to make it through life, that my truth didn't have to be, and in fact would never be, the exact same as any other person's truth. I'd crashed as I left the church and confronted the reality of what I'd seen as a wasted life, but I started to see it as what it was: a clean slate with a nearly infinite range of possibility.
A couple of years into my healing, I rediscovered some of the LGBT fiction I'd come to love as a teenager, one of the few things which had helped me realize I wasn't alone in my way of thinking during my darkest moments. And, after some time reading through a number of different stories, I discovered a story titled "Lives In Periphery", an unfinished(still . . . get to writing, my love! :P ) story which spoke to me in ways I can't completely describe, at least not in the time I have left to write this story. I emailed the author, telling him it made me want to write again, and he emailed me back encouraging me.
And I rediscovered writing.
Fast forward three years to the time of writing this, I've taken journey after journey as I've dealt with unresolved emotions through the written word. I've come to accept my sexuality, to accept my uniqueness, and to love those aspects of myself for what they are. I came to love the LGBT community, and truly feel like I was a part of it. I've made friends who've become family, and made connections which have changed my life completely.
And seven, almost eight, weeks ago, the author who encouraged me to write emailed me to tell me he'd loved my most recently completed novel so much he read it in one night. We started talking, and haven't stopped yet. It's the same conversation, it just pauses for sleeping and work . . . those pauses are the most unfortunate thing in the world. :)
Sometimes, the darkness still gets me. Sometimes I still feel like I'm unworthy of acceptance or love. I used to have to pick myself up out of that, and I'm grateful I have someone else, my dearest love, who is now always beside me when i need him most.
So, one last word for anyone reading this.
It does get better. It gets better when you learn that your truth is your own, and no one else's. It gets better when you realize that life is full of possibility. It gets better when you realize that you are fine just the way you are, and nothing is wrong with you for feeling the way you do.The world needs you, and you are loved.
~Cynus -
Found an article on Radical Islam today and thought you all might find it interesting.
https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/they-werent-muslims-but-my-dear-they-were-cd6b78b6c477#.kbrasrfje -
Announcing the sequel to "Fearless", coming up this Wednesday. We'll be following the story of Zane Thompson, the boy with the cane from the last two chapters of "Fearless" as we explore his important family/friend relationships, and journey with him as we discover why he feels such a desperate need to do so many things with his life.
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This is one of my favorite comics from Cyanide and Happiness. :)
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...and sometimes fiction succeeds in being stranger than truth! A well-told tale with a twisted, demented, and wonderful conclusion A great treat indeed. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you for reading it. :) I'm glad you liked it! There's a sequel in the works, and it should begin posting soon.
Nice story, with a good plot.
And a good laugh!
Thank you!
Thank you! :) Glad you enjoyed it. I was hoping people would laugh.
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While I did find this summary both informative and intriguing, I am curious as to why one specific significant event which greatly impacted the Muslim world was left out of Pertinax Carrus' summary, and I hope he will see this and perhaps expound on this point.
During the time of Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan), the Mongolians conquered Central Asia, which at the time was under Muslim rule. Chinggis, who cared little for the cities he conquered, made a point of riding into Bukhara in order to demonstrate that he had conquered such a pivotal Muslim capital. He completely absorbed the remnants of ancient Persia into his empire during his reign.
Then, during the reign on Mongke Khan, the grandson of Chinggis (I believe this happened roughly twenty-five years after the death of Chinggis, but I don't have my sources near me to verify that for sure), started a campaign which took his armies into Iraq and Syria. Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad (Or rather allowed the Christians he liberated to sack and destroy everything Muslim in the city), and then pushed on to the Mediterranean. While HUlagu was in the MIddle East, Mongke Khan died and the Mongolian empire truly began to fall apart, but it didn't disintegrate, it broke into four large nations who all continued to maintain reasonably diplomatic ties with each other. One of these was the Ilkhanate, which controlled much of the Arabian Middle East for nearly 80 years.
Considering how young Islam still is, eighty years of Mongolian rule must have impacted them to some degree, and one would wonder how this time period also affected their outlook, traditions, and politics.
I also note that the Mongolian empire famously moved personnel across the entire empire to where they were needed. Many Arabian and Persian scholars found themselves on the opposite side of Asia performing clerical duties for the Khan and his court. Did not this internationalism thrust upon them by the Mongols impact them as well?
I believe the trends of "getting along with the West" began in this period of international trade and the true melting pot of cultures that was the Mongolian Empire, and that one could argue that at this point those trends are just as traditional as the radical ideas many Muslims have endorsed in the past and continue to endorse now. Perhaps the expansion by military might was the beginning, but I still want to believe that people inherently wish for peace, rather than the sword, and hope that peace will win out in the end. -
So there I was last night, thinking that even though I prefer to wait for stories to be complete before reading them, I'll just take a quick look at the first few paragraphs before heading off to bed.
Suddenly, I reached the end of Chapter 10, I realized it was way, way past my bedtime, and I was going to pay for it. Which I did.
But was it ever worth it! Excellent story so far. I look forward to more.
Excellent story! Very nicely done. One of those stories that you want to re-read after a bit of time goes by.
Thanks for writing it, Cynus
This post just made my day. Thanks, Gee!
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I have a (bad?) habit of using gender-neutral terminolgy in my writing. Happily, my editor fixes most of them, but there are times when a character wants to be deliberately misleading as to the gender of the person they are talking about. In that case, they'll use "they" rather than one of "he" or "she". They wouldn't use "he or she" because they know who it is and simply don't want to correct the assumption made by the person they are talking to as to the gender of the person to whom they are referring.
Now try to write that paragraph without the singular they...
I suspect it'll be a nightmare to read.I have employed this strategy in real life many times, especially when concealing the gender of a person I was falling for when conversing with my sister prior to coming out. It must have worked, as she told me she was surprised when I came out.
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Having recently finished 'From the Cup of the Worthless' it is a delight to see another Cynus story appearing on AD. Cynus is an amazing storyteller, so one thing which we can be certain is that this is going to be a good tale. What is interesting about this story from Cynus is that he has adopted a voice and perspective very different from that which we saw in 'From the Cup of the Worthless'. This hints at a very different type of story, and one I suspect will be full of self irony.
It is going to be interesting to see where this goes and I look forward to reading the rest of it as it is published.
The different perspective/style wasn't intentional at first. I was trying to write in first person past-tense but Clint had other ideas. I suppose his ability to live in the moment had something to do with that. I hope you continue to enjoy it as the story progresses.
Great start.
It made me laugh a good couple of times!
I like the way Clint acts, thinks...
You got me to follow this one!
Yay! Chapter 1 was supposed to be funny, so I'm happy to hear it had the desired effect. :)
This is an enjoyable story with some very real characters. They seem complicated - almost like, you know, people! I think if I could walk the halls of my high school once more I'd spot every one of them, and wonder what mischief they were up to. Very well written and fun to read.
Thanks, Chris. :) I hope all my stories eventually live up to that praise. I've always tried to make the characters my focus, and I think it paid off in this story.
Talk about someone not taking any crap from anyone.
Clint is kind of fearless, isn't he? :P
And Sheila is an interesting manifestation of the bully. There was nothing like her in my high school years. I think there will be some interesting episodes with her.
A wonderful and enjoyable start. I'll be anxiously awaiting the next chapter.
And I look forward to hearing from you as it continues. I don't know if Sheila represents anyone I've known in the past. I wasn't really planning on her being in this story at all, but as I wrote that chapter it was as if a flashing neon sign appeared which read: "Insert Bully Here". Thus, Sheila was born.
Chapter 4.
Cliff hangers.
Should be forbidden.
Still brilliant story though....
:-)
I love my cliffhangers. Perhaps it's my love of things forbidden? :P
You have truly caught the style of twins I've known - they do communicate on a completely different plane than us mere mortals. A very fun story thus far.
I grew up surrounded by twins. My whole life has been a character study. I'm glad you're still enjoying it. :D
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Having recently finished 'From the Cup of the Worthless' it is a delight to see another Cynus story appearing on AD. Cynus is an amazing storyteller, so one thing which we can be certain is that this is going to be a good tale. What is interesting about this story from Cynus is that he has adopted a voice and perspective very different from that which we saw in 'From the Cup of the Worthless'. This hints at a very different type of story, and one I suspect will be full of self irony.
It is going to be interesting to see where this goes and I look forward to reading the rest of it as it is published.
Thanks, Nigel. Yes, this is definitely a different voice than any I've ever written in before, but Clint demanded it of me. I'd say this book is a rather Freudian representation of me, since Clint meshes so well with my inner child. :)
Great start.
It made me laugh a good couple of times!
I like the way Clint acts, thinks...
You got me to follow this one!
Laughter was what I was going for, so I'm glad it caused a few laughs. :) I'm glad you're following, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on later chapters!
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Pictures of the victims. A face to the names and numbers of the dead.
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The tale of a high school student desperate to make his mark on his peers. He wants to come out, and he wants to come out big enough that no one will forget it, but somehow it always goes wrong.
"Fearless" Is a lighthearted story of friendship, family, and of course, courage. It's a tad cliche, some things in life are meant to be. -
I must say that the longer this novel is going on the more and more interesting it is becoming. It is not an easy read but it is well worth reading. The characters are interesting, strong and well portrayed. It is a really good piece of story telling by Cynus with some really great writing.
I do appreciate that compliment, Nigel. Thank you for sticking with it through the end. :)
Well 'From the Cup of the Worthless' has come to an end. I for one will miss it. This has been an interesting story well told and well plotted. It has not been the easiest of reads. There was so much going on that you really had to put an effort into following the tale, but it was an effort that was well rewarded. In my opinion this has been one of Cynus's best pieces of writing so far. I really enjoyed it.
If there's anything from my personal library which I'd recommend to people, it's this one. It'll likely be a much smoother read now, since no one has to wait for the next chapter and risk forgetting information. I'm grateful you stayed with it, and I truly appreciate your comments and compliments. I hope you'll like the sequel as well, which should release sometime around September.
A huge amount of work went into writing this piece. Cynus did a fantastic job pulling all the characters together. This is a story everyone can enjoy.
C
Thank you, Cole. I appreciate all the support you gave me while writing this.
And he is working on a sequel that is appearing to be even better. I'm lucky to be an editor so I get a brief glimpse of what is to come. Love this writer.
Thanks, ricky. :) I hope the sequel continues to live up to your expectations.
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What a neat idea! Congratulations, Bi Janus!
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Christopher Bram, whose novel, The Father of Frankenstein, became the movie, Gods and Monsters, has written an account of the great post-WWII American gay authors (some born elsewhere). The story of their struggles, their relationships with one another, their feuds, and their foibles is told by a writer who knew a few of them and knew of them all. The prose is lively and delightful. The "Outlaws" include Vidal, Capote, Baldwin, Isherwood, Wilson, Kramer, Maupin, White, Kushner, and others. If you enjoy literary history from an insider's perspective, try this one.
That sounds amazing! Thank you.
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OK, first question. How is AD readership? Still strong? Growing, sagging, or holding about even?
C
And, on top of that, what can we, the authors, do to help grow that even more?
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There is, as Cynus has suggested, a lot of good stuff in there. However Rilke has messed up a lot of lives with just one sentence of his: 'if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all'.
I, too, raised an eyebrow at that line, yet the way I chose to take it allowed me to let it slide. He was responding directly to a person who sent him poetry, who inquired if he should abandon his current career and pursue poetry instead. I believe Rilke was responding in the context of writing as a career, and I think he meant that if you don't feel writing is a necessity to your soul, you shouldn't try to make a living from it, because it's a difficult place to make a living, and without having the burning passion to back it up, you'll end up somewhere you don't want to be.
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http://www.carrothers.com/rilke1.htm
These are some letters written from an accomplished writer to a young aspiring poet. There's a lot of good stuff in here, and I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy! :) -
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It seems to be happening everywhere, so whatever it is, it's universal.
I imagine it has more to do with the time of year than anything else. At least for the US based users, the winter funk seems to get a lot of people from January thru March. It got to me this year, which is why I'm scrambling to get my next novel done by the time From The Cup of The Worthless finishes posting, because even though I ended up way ahead, I'm now barely on track.
With any luck, we'll see things pick up now that we're in spring. -
Mysteries are tough to write. I've written two stories that had a mystery component and most people worked out the first one without a lot of trouble. It's a definite skill to be able to write mysteries where the mystery isn't solved by the reader well before the ending.
This is a skill which has long eluded me. My first attempt at a novel after completing "Rumors of War" was a mystery, and my editor told me in no uncertain terms that it was not the right genre for me.
But "Doing Something" by Cole Parker is one of my favorite of his works. It usually scores in the top five, and usually the top three along with "Duck Duck Goose" and "Distorted Perspectives".
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I don't think anyone will have an easy time with this question. I'll take a different approach to answering it, though. I have several stories I love a touch more than the others, but could not identify a specific favorite from them, because I love them all for different reasons.
So I'll name those few and talk about the ways I love them:
From The Cup of The Worthless: Although this hasn't gathered as much attention as I'd hoped, I consider it my best work technically, which makes sense as it's the most recent. This is the story I put the greatest amount of research into, and I loved it before it was even written, but it also had points where my muse was so demanding I was emotionally drained after writing it. To follow Cole's analogy of the children, this was the child I stayed up with all night when it was sick and nursed it back to health. You can't avoid growing a bit closer to one you've sacrificed that much for.
Return With Honor: I wasn't immediately attached to this story when I started it, to be quite honest. When I wrote it, it was out of desperation to get something posting because I've tried to keep a constant flow of material to the various sites I post, and this was something I knew I could write, considering it was set within a culture with which I was intimately familiar. That familiarity ended up drawing me into my own world while writing it, however, and by the end I was in love with it. It has more of me in it than I'd thought it would, and that puts it up near the top.The Navigator: Although it has its flaws, this was the first novel where I felt I'd reached a new level in my writing. It was what told me that I could do this, that my dreams of becoming a published author might just be attainable. Someday I may go back and rewrite it, to smooth out its rough patches, but a part of me wants it to remain flawed as a symbol of where I've come from, a step on the road I can be proud of.
As for my short stories, I couldn't possibly pick a favorite. Short stories are still my favorite thing to write. I could list some honorable mentions, but I'd be here all day trying to figure it out. -
I loved this! Thank you.
I suspect it'll be a nightmare to read.Scan to donate
Gay Pride Month and government
in News & Views
Posted
I don't know how anyone could have possibly expected anything different. Since the selection of Pence as VP, there was no way a Trump administration was going to be remotely supportive, regardless of that ridiculous point in his campaign where he claimed to be a "friend of the gay community".
But the LGBTQIA+ community was probably going to get hit by any Republican who ran if they were elected, Trump's just probably the worst one that could've done so.
Note, certainly not condoning anything here, but this definitely should've been expected once we knew who would be in the White House.