Joel: Welcome to the Called to Queer live session for Affirmation Connections. I’m so excited that everyone is here. I know that we have more people connecting. They probably have received the email and they’re clicking on the link and will join us shortly. But we are very excited to have both Kate Mower and Colette Dalton with us today who are the hosts of a podcast that launched last year, Called to Queer. And Called to Queer, its purpose is to hold space for queer Mormon women, genderqueer, and intersex folks, and close the gap for queer individuals who have some connection to the Mormon community who aren’t cis men. No matter your sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, Colette and Kate will no doubt prompt you to think deeper and seek queer joy.
So with that, I want to bring them out onto the stage. [00:01:00] There they are and leave it for them. And this is a live podcast episode for them, which is their very first. So we’re very excited to be a part of that.
Kate: We’re so grateful that you asked this Joel, and we’re also very happy with your writing of our Called to Queer blurb, that we want to hire you to do that for us more often. This is going to be a, we have some stuff planned, but we also want to open this up for folks who want to ask questions, but we’re going to go off of the format that we usually go for our podcasts. So we will give you some insights into how that works. But before that, we’re going to go ahead with our intro to this episode, because it’s going to show up a little bit later on our site as an episode.
Colette: You’ve heard it here first. Thank you for being here live.
Kate: Hello, and [00:02:00] welcome to Called to Queer, where we hold space for the queer Mormon women, genderqueer and intersex experiences. I’m Kate and my pronouns are she/they.
Colette: And I’m Colette and my pronouns are she/her.
Kate: And today we’re talking with Affirmation Connections. We’re so excited about this. But before we jumped into that, we want to start off by saying what brought us queer joy this week. So Colette, what brought you queer joy this week?
Colette: So this week was graduation at BYU and it was interesting for me reflecting back on, I graduated with my MSW 10 years ago from there, and how much has changed in my life. And how much has changed at BYU in general. And I saw a post that someone had made public on Facebook. Jillian Orr. She came out at BYU at graduation and it was just such a happy picture. She had sewed rainbow colors inside her gown and then opened it up to show the rainbow flag when she was on [00:03:00] stage. And it just made me so happy to see that picture and to see her post. And I really hope that people can feel safe in being who they are fully, just like that walking across stage at graduation. Made me very happy.
Kate: Yeah. I know. I saw that post too. That was amazing.
Colette: So cool.
Kate: I was really impressed that she was able to sew that so well, I was like looking at it. Yeah, it was really
Colette: I’m like, was it made that way? Because I wanted that gown.
How about you, Kate? What was your queer joy for the week?
Kate: Mine is not as exciting, maybe, you know, like very visible as your queer joy was this week. But for me, I was walking along the Black Sea this week and I was just hit, kind of overcome, with peace and [00:04:00] joy and presentness that I haven’t felt in. I haven’t recognized in myself as something that was really possible, I think? For me, I’m always like searching and thinking about the future project or what’s next and to spend a couple hours just being completely present was a hundred percent about being safe and comfortable with who I am in that moment.
And that only comes with understanding who I am as a queer person and being okay with that finally. So it was just like this moment of reckoning of, oh my gosh. I’m okay.
Colette: Uh, don’t downplay your queer joy. That’s incredible.
Kate: That was a good one.
Colette: Yeah, it is. And I think that’s where so many of us want to be. And I think that’s partly why we talk about queer joy every week. So we started this [00:05:00] podcast back in December of 2021. And Kate, do you want to talk a little bit about why we started this podcast when there’s already some, queer LDS type podcasts out there? Why another one?
Kate: Yeah, Colette approached me and asked me, maybe we should do this. And I thought, yes, absolutely we should do this. I think you were a little bit hesitant. You didn’t quite know if you really wanted to do this. but
Colette: it sounded intimidating.
Kate: I said, yeah, I really think that this is needed. Because we wanted to focus on elements of that specific types of queerness. We wanted to talk about a lot about AFAB experiences growing up in the church, or at least people who have been Latter-day Saints or Mormon. We wanted to talk with them about growing up in that very gendered experience because Mormonism is very gendered.
So we wanted to [00:06:00] highlight that specific focus of what it’s like growing up and being raised as girls or women and knowing you’re queer. And I think that’s especially important when we think about sexuality in the way that girls are socialized to think about their sexuality versus boys.
And so this podcast was meant to, what it was meant to do was start that community and it has turned into something else. So I don’t know. Maybe you see it as something else. Do you see this turned into something else?
Colette: I, yeah, I do see it turning in something else, but I just think it’s interesting that when one thing that you said that convinced me that yeah, we should do this. Cause I was like, aren’t there already enough podcasts out there and you pointed out. Yeah. And there’s even some Mormon queer podcasts, but none of them have AFAB hosts that are actually queer themselves. All the ones that we knew of [00:07:00] that were really focused on this particular intersection, were really hosted by non-queer individuals or by a cis gay men. And we thought that maybe our perspective could bring something that wasn’t already in the community. And great question. AFAB assigned female at birth. Kate and I are both AFAB. Kate identifies as nonbinary, but was assigned female at birth and identify as a cis female.
Kate: AMAB. You can be also assigned male at birth, and sometimes you’ll see this as assigned gender or assigned sex at birth. Abbreviated H G a B S.
Colette: So as we were starting, we were trying to figure out what we want to talk about. We really wanted to bring on individuals. There are plenty of interview podcasts, but to have two AFAB individuals interviewing other AFAB individuals or genderqueer individuals and be able to talk about that intersection.
[00:08:00] But one thing. We wanted to be like, what do we do each week? And we wanted to start off each week by talking about queer joy. And I just thought that would be a fun thing to do, especially when, so often when we talk about our queer Mormon stories, a lot of times are stories of pain. There’s so much pain as anyone in this realm knows.
And so I really liked the idea of, Hey, can we talk a little bit about what brought us joy this week? Our lives aren’t perfect. We still struggle in different ways, but can we talk about some queer joy experiences? And can we then maybe it’s been helping me look for more as I’m like, oh wait, we’re recording something. What was the queer joy?
Kate: Yeah, I think that’s important for everybody to recognize. Like we don’t just come up with the queer joy. We have to actually be reflecting about these things all week long before [00:09:00] we’re doing the interviews. That what are the things that are bringing us specifically queer joy.
Colette: We actually did have a question from a listener about queer joy and they were just wondering they’re in a better place now, but initially they’re like, what would have really helped me five years ago is the idea of what like, how can I lean into the queer joy? It, again, it is so hard being in a structured religion and queer. How can I find queer joy? How can I lean into that? What thoughts do you have about that, Kate?
Kate: Yeah. So we offered, we opened up questions to our audience, please, think about what your, what you might want to ask us on this live. And this was one of the questions. And so I’ve been thinking about it for a little bit. And I remembered something that I like a YouTube [00:10:00] channel called ContraPoints if you know it. And it helps me think through a lot of trans issues and one of the episodes was about something along the lines of queer joy. It was about like, how do you be trans in a world that is anti-trans.
And at the end, there’s this video from the old show Cops, I don’t know how many people know that show or remember that show, but in the United States, there’s a show called Cops. And it’s just like going around following cops is like from the 1996. And there was this moment where they’re recording live. This person who is trans, is a trans woman, who is just on the street, she is part of a marginalized, more marginalized community and marginalized racial community. And she says, she says, I’m beautiful. And you can’t take that away from me, something like that.
[00:11:00] Yes. The theme song. Somebody in the group chat said, I totally remember Cops, especially the theme song. Yeah. But there’s this moment when she has this queer joy of I am who I am, no matter what you’re going to say about me, no matter what you’re gonna do, I am who I am and I love myself and I know that I’m beautiful and I know that I’m worthy.
And I think that’s an important aspect. This has to be internalized, right? Like my queer joy this week is something that was internalized for me because externally, we’re not going to be able to necessarily always get what we need as far as affirmation, right? Here’s a space called Affirmation, not always going to be able to get that in certain spaces and we have to carry that into those spaces with us.
And I just thought that was just a really beautiful moment. Not just on Cops, that this has [00:12:00] been recorded, but that this moment. Impacted someone enough that when they’re making a YouTube video many years later, that they reflect on that and go that was a moment that meant something to me that this person could have that much self-affirmation. That it, it shines a light on my experience and how I can feel about myself. So I thought that was really cool moment. And I think that brings up like one part of the queer joy, which is, there are a lot of really hard things going on and we can find it within ourselves. And I think there’s a more positive element to queer joy.
Maybe Colette, you can talk more about that.
Colette: Well, one thing I was thinking, as you were talking. It’s always interesting, Kate and I don’t compare our queer joys before we start recording, we just share them. And it’s interesting to me, how often our queer joy [00:13:00] ends up being similarly themed. And so often a lot of our queer joy is about community.
And that is one thing that I think is really powerful here with Affirmation and other groups is the power of community. And it’s been really interesting as Kate alluded to earlier, we really were thinking that this space would be really resonate with AFAB people and some genderqueer people, but we’ve been able to see that it’s grown beyond that, just we have regular church members listening along. We do have cis gay men listening along and we’re so happy for all of that. I think we can all learn and grow as we listen and witness each other’s stories. And I think that’s part of the power of community. As many of us who are queer and in the church in whatever capacity know, this can be a very isolating experience.[00:14:00]
And so a lot of our queer joy is about being around others who affirm our identity or that just help us realize we aren’t alone. And so I did want to highlight that part of queer joy. That’s one thing I talk a ton to my clients about whenever I have a queer clients. I mean, and clients in general, it’s just, okay, who are your people? Who’s your support system? But when someone is queer and maybe isolating, maybe doesn’t have a lot of queer friends. I do start exploring, Hey, what would that be like for you? I know that is scary. I know that it’s vulnerable, but I know how powerful queer joy in community can be. And that’s one thing I love about our podcast is making these new friends and forming a bigger queer community, that is just so needed.
Kate: Yeah, I love that you’re talking about community. And then in the chat here, we get a comment from Jerry Chong. I’ve actually, Jerry I’ve actually never met you in person, but we’ve interacted a ton [00:15:00] online. You’re very active in this space, especially Affirmation space. And so it’s so interesting that Colette is talking about community and then this comment pops up in the group chat that is showcasing exactly what this is like exactly what Affirmation is like.
So Jerry’s in Calgary. We’ve got his queer joy. And I’m just going to share it really quick since we’re on the topic of queer joy.
My queer joy this week was a conversation about the rainbows that are refracting through the windows in the temple. I spoke about seeing the rainbows shining everywhere inside the temple and being able to fold one in my hand, that chapel before going into the endowment session.
Thank you, Jerry so much for writing. That I also think another element of this is creating community about our shared Latter-day Saint heritage or shared Latter-day Saints maybe growing up experiences and those sorts of things. That we don’t have [00:16:00] to. We don’t all have to share the same path for a faith or spiritual journey to understand one another and to understand exactly what Jerry’s talking about here.
We know what that looks like. We can imagine these certain scenarios. We have the vocabulary as well to talk about Mormonism. I often talk it, talk about it as I, I speak Mormon. I speak Latter-day Saint. I know that vocabulary and that’s really important in this space to be able to speak both Mormonism and be able to speak queerness as well.
And sometimes you’re in spaces that aren’t capable of speaking one of those languages and you feel like cut off from a part of yourself. So it’s really nice to have these spaces where you can explore both those sides of our at least parts of our identity.
Colette: I think that term cutoff really resonates, [00:17:00] probably with a lot of people in this space. I remember when I was really starting to wrestle with my sexuality and my spirituality and my religion, and it was a mess. And I remember telling my therapist at the time, I’m like, I feel like I have to either cut off and basically I have to either kill my queer side of me or my Mormon side. Like there’s no way to integrate. There’s no way to make this work. And I love being able to see that, Hey, I have been able to make it work. It may not be the journey I expected. It may not be what maybe some family members or friends or church people might expect it to be, or want it to be. But to be able to be in these spaces where I remember talking to my therapist again, and it was like, Hey. I don’t want to die anymore. I really felt like I had to kill off one side of me or the other. So like this isn’t working. Suicidal ideation, as we know, is really common in this community, unfortunately, because it is [00:18:00] so hard. And so being able to talk about this queer joy and be like, it does get better. It’s not always easy. We have hard days, but we can still have queer joy individually in community. And it’s just really powerful.
Kate: I think that resonates with anybody anywhere. And Affirmation is really an international community. This is not just an a, Jerry is in Canada, but we have lots of folks around the world in Affirmation and as an international community.
Our queerness is treated very differently in different places. And there are some places that are not safe to be out. There are some places that it’s very dangerous to be out and we have Affirmation community members in those places. And to [00:19:00] have a place like this to come, to have even just a virtual world or have a Facebook messenger group with people that you can be safe and out to, I think is also really huge.
I credit Affirmation with a lot of my own feeling like I’ve found a safe place to land, which is exactly Affirmations, I dunno, theme to find, to offer a safe place to land. That was definitely a place for me. And I hope to see that for places where there’s no other safe place to land, except for a place like this.
Colette: Can you talk more about that, Kate? I don’t know. Everyone may not know that you are currently in Romania. So talking about having Affirmation everywhere and you are on Affirmations board? Is that? And so can you talk about what your experience is like having grown up in the U.S., Now [00:20:00] being in Romania, but that experience is like in somewhere where maybe it is even more harder to be queer and how you can find queer joy in even those situations.
Kate: Yeah. Thank you for asking that. That’s a great question. Romania is in Europe. It’s in what we consider Eastern Europe. I currently am about a hundred miles away from the border of Ukraine. Like I said, I’m on the Black Sea. So I think a lot, and I’m constantly aware of what’s going on in, in Ukraine thinking about what’s happening in Ukraine.
And Romania is not a place, even though it’s part of the EU, it’s not a place that has same sex marriage. In 2018, they had a referendum to try to amend the Romanian constitution to say that marriage should be between a man and a woman, because it currently says that marriage should [00:21:00] be between spouses. That referendum failed, but there’s still a lot of hate and hateful rhetoric plastered pretty much everywhere. And that’s if it’s brought up. So if hate is brought up, if it’s brought up at all, otherwise, people just don’t know what to do with you, especially as a nonbinary person who looks trans masc and people don’t know how to address me even.
So Romanian is a romance language. So anybody who I know we have folks on here who speak Spanish and Portuguese, also romance languages, where if you try to speak these languages, it’s very hard to get around gender. And so there’s lots of elements that make my existence here difficult. That would be easier in the United States. However, I have a community of people who [00:22:00] understand this, who understand what, when I can talk about gender, who understand when I can talk about Mormonism. Affirmation is that safe place for me, when sometimes Romania is not safe for me. Did that answer all the questions?
Colette: I think so. I mean, I could listen to you talk forever and I guess that’s why we have a podcast. But thank you. I think queer joy is it’s just so important. And so one thing I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about is how can we encourage or help others find queer joy? I think for a lot of queer individuals in this space that self-hatred can come up pretty strong. That isolation can come up pretty strong. And so what can people do to look for more queer joy, find queer joy experience some peace or self-love like you referenced in your queer joy from this [00:23:00] week. Any thoughts about that?
Kate: Yeah, Man I don’t know why I’m like on a downer kick with my stories, but I’m gonna, I’m going to give us a little bit more of a downer.
Colette: Let’s also give you a break. Cause it’s 1:00 AM your time.
Kate: That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. I felt a lot of rejection. We all felt rejection. We’ve all felt like our Latter day Saint community may have rejected us. Our families may have rejected us. And our friends may have rejected us. There’s a lot that comes with that.
And so I think that’s sometimes easy to internalize the rejection easier than the affirmation, but. When you hear the affirmation after the rejection, when you’ve internalized, this is this on me, is this who I am? Is this, are they right about me? And then you come into a community that says, I hear your whole story. I hear everything that you’re saying to me. And I [00:24:00] love you. And I accept you. I’m going to get emotional because there have been people like that in my life. I want to shout out two people who have been a part of Affirmation. Bobby Lee Corey, and Summer.
They were the people who I was first able to express my whole self to who were Latter-day Saints and also queer. And they spoke back the words to me. I will affirm you. And those words, I will affirm you, were exactly what I needed to hear. So even though we have all of these messages, constantly streaming into us, that we can internalize as rejection. Just one person saying I affirm you or two people saying I affirm you can make all the difference. And I think that is Affirmation’s goal to spread [00:25:00] that as far as possible. And that’s our goal, I think, too. Spread that as far as possible, we see your story. It’s your individual story that we want you to see it reflected in the stories that we’re sharing. And we want you to hear that you’re affirmed in exactly who you are.
Colette: That’s beautiful. I’m like, what do I have to add to that? We can just wrap up now, right? That was perfect.
So yeah, I agree. I think having that community, people that truly see you and just being there is so huge. And for those that don’t know, I’m a therapist, Kate’s a historian. It’s a very interesting conversations we can get into with those backgrounds. But as a therapist, just some basic things that I help, a lot of my queer clients do in addition to finding community is working on that self-talk. I think so often we internalize the rhetoric of those [00:26:00] around us. And when we hear those rejections, it becomes really easy to then start rejecting ourselves and using that rejective language, rejecting language ourselves.
And so working to change some of those negative beliefs, to have affirmations that maybe you say to yourself that are more positive. I have clients who will write stuff on their bathroom mirror, that they will see multiple times a day, because what we surround ourselves with is what we start to internalize. And it’s really hard when we are surrounded by a maybe not very affirming church community or family community, or friends or wherever we are. And so being able to create a space where you can affirm yourself or be affirmed by other people so that you can internalize more positive language, I think is a really powerful tool to help push against some of that queer negativity, the internalized homophobia, [00:27:00] queer phobia that a lot of us experience and start looking for the queer joy.
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. I was trying to write in the group chat. I would love it if we can make it so that we can actually hear from Nathan. So if that’s possible, I would love to, to make that happen. Because we, what Colette is talking about, Nathan also put in the group chat and I think it’s, it would be really great if our listeners could hear Nathan’s voice.
We’ve had Melissa Malcolm-King come on the podcast and we’ve had Laurie Lee Hall come on the podcast who are both strongly affiliated with Affirmation, and both have actually talked about being part of Affirmation and working with Nathan. And so I think I really liked for our listeners to be able to hear that comment from Nathan and how it correlates with what Colette just said.
Nathan: I don’t want to [00:28:00] take up this time here. You guys have a very sacred space and I want to honor that, but, thank you. I feel very honored that you gave me a little time and I just wanted to validate what you said Kate. It’s really easy when we are coming out to ourselves, within our community to get the temperature of what things were like, where we’re at, in our local community. What is the church like where we’re at, what society like where we’re at? How are we being treated? How do we feel? And then to be able to have the experience, the absolute privilege to be asked by your peers to help lead an organization like Affirmation.
All of a sudden I had a worldwide view and I was able to see what was happening all around the world, because I am telling, you wherever Latter-day Saints are, there queer people are also. And it is astounding to me that for all of the wonderful correlation that we grow [00:29:00] up in as Mormons, everything is correlated. Our meetings. You know, how we dress. The age we go on missions. Our vernacular, the way we speak. It is fascinating that throughout the world how uncorrelated the treatment of LGBTQIA+ people are, so much so that I have brought this up in meetings with the church in Salt Lake.
And it’s interesting that it is driven a lot by our local leaders and their education. There are general preferences. And so for me, this helps me understand that in Affirmation, when we’re making an outreach, our best way to make that outreach is to do exactly what Kate and Colette are saying. That we build that queer internal joy, that affirmation of the LGBTQIA+ individual and their families. And then the relationships are built on that local level. Of being able to move forward and make those relationships happen, [00:30:00] because that is the very big difference a lot of times between life, death, um, and happiness uh, not feeling so much queer joy.
And so that’s why I just echo Kate and Colette. That for me, Affirmation is that ability to build us as LGBTQIA+ individuals, get rid of the shame scripts, find the community that completely validates our ability to move forward. And that is an extreme part of the great overall health that helps all of us stand in places that feel safe and healthy for us.
Kate: Thank you, Nathan. And I love that. Like the moving forward. I think that’s, what’s so important about my queer joy this week, because I’ve always felt like moving forward and moving towards queer joy and to actually like land in it and be like this is it. This is so cool. This is a moment where I get to feel just in my own skin.
And I think that Affirmation has definitely helped me to get to that [00:31:00] point and other communities as well. But definitely Affirmation has helped me to be like, oh yeah, in my skin, I feel comfortable.
Colette: And I really appreciate your comment, Nathan, about pointing out just the discrepancies that queer individuals face. And it is that leadership roulette that so many of us are familiar with. I think back to, as listeners may know, my first experience with a woman was I fell in love with my roommate and we dated and we ended up moving apart, trying to a stay in the church and be good Mormons. And at one time we got back together for a weekend, just to hang out and then we were physical.
And it was so interesting having different bishops at this point and how the bishops treated the exact same situation. We were both there. We both did the same things and how the bishops treated it so differently. And that can be a big source of queer pain to [00:32:00] have that leadership roulette.
And if we are conflating the church with God or a religion with our spiritual path, which may not be the same thing for everybody, that can cause a lot of queer pain. And it’s hard when we’re in this space where people who don’t understand that say you can find joy in the church. I’m like, but right now the church is bringing me a lot of pain because of these things. And so sometimes needing to take that step away to truly find that queer joy and that space where I can exist as a whole person and not have to cut off certain parts of me. And everyone is on their own path. And that’s one thing I love about Affirmation and different communities is no matter where you are with the church or where you’re are with queerness, like you’re accepted here. You’re part of this community. And thank you for being here.[00:33:00]
Kate: I just want to hold space for a second. That’s like a very vulnerable, emotional thing for you to be talking about and bringing up. And I really appreciate, I want to honor that, that you’ve, that you. Recognize that pain that you’re able to talk about, that pain, you’re able to talk about that Bishop roulette.
I think one thing about having a podcast is people think that your life is just a free-for-all and open for everybody to unpack with you. But no, we have our own private lives outside of the podcast and we get to decide what we bring to it, what we bring to this. And I appreciate it when you are able to bring in something as meaningful and helpful to help other people understand that as that. So thank you.
Colette: Thank you. And that’s one thing I love about our guests too, is when [00:34:00] they show up and do the same thing. We’re asking hard questions sometimes about their stories and where they’re at. And of course, we always give our guests full permission after we edit to say, What do you want? Is there anything you want us to take out? Because it is vulnerable. But I think there’s also healing in being able to share our stories and realizing we’re not alone because I know you and I, Kate have talked about our various experiences with that leadership roulette. And yes, I told this publicly and I’m in an okay place to share that, but not everyone is. And so just having that community and I’m just so grateful for you and for this community.
Kate: Thank you. All right, so Daniel’s got some queer joy. Let’s share some more queer joy.
Daniel says my queer joy is being able to zoom in and out from mainstream culture to gain different perspectives on anything. Also being able to teach and be taught with soul and body. Not only words, our journey is not discursive.
I [00:35:00] love all of that, but I especially love this idea of tapping in to different mainstream culture and being able to tap out. I think that is something that we try to offer this as a safe space. Our podcast Called to Queer as a safe space to tap into, right? When things seem scary or big, that there’s some story that you can tap into to say I’m safe. I’m good. I’m okay. But I agree, like tapping in to different ideas and cultures is really helpful, but also being able to find that safe space, as well.
And yeah, definitely body and soul. Colette and I talk a lot about embodied experiences. We talk a lot about spirituality. We, aren’t always on the same page with each other, nor are we on the same page with guests come in with a wide range of spiritual understanding, beliefs, all sorts of stuff. [00:36:00] And we want to hold space for whatever it is that they believe and how they feel spiritually.
And so, one of those ways that we can hold space for that is what are you feeling in your body? What does your body take in? So for me, spirituality totally happens in my body. And I think that I cut myself off a lot of times from that spirituality from that, from my embodied spirituality, because I thought, oh, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not rational. It’s all of these things, when it’s not just cutting off part of my spirituality, it’s cutting off part of my body, which is the problem with cutting off part of my sexuality or part of my gender. It’s the same thing. So making space for all of us, for all our whole selves is really important.
Colette: Well, and I think that body comment is interesting. It’s only until like recently in the last little bit that I’m really starting to find certain modalities that speak to me more, [00:37:00] that are more embodied. That wasn’t something I really learned a lot in grad school. And I feel like it’s so interesting in Mormon culture, so often we think of bodies as being bad. We’re really want to focus on the spirit or whatever, and bodies are just a temptation and don’t give into sin and that sort of thing, but we are whole human beings and we have all aspects of ourselves. We have physical and mental and emotional and spiritual and social and like, and, and, and, and. And so often we treat these as separate, but we are all of them. And so being able to realize to work with your body and these embodied experiences instead of against it, that’s actually brought me quite a bit of joy lately to be more integrated and not have to try to treat these as separate things.
Kate: Definitely. For sure. That’s. I think that [00:38:00] the embodiment and the embodied experience is also part of the reason that we started this podcast. The idea that we felt especially AFAB people are cut off so often from particularly sexuality, that we are not sexual beings. And so we, you just shut down that part of you. And that was a huge reason for us starting this podcast is saying we want to reclaim the, this part of us that we’re told we’re not supposed to have, because we were assigned female at birth.
Colette: Yeah. And I’d love to talk about that more. We did have a question from a listener and I’ll pull that up and read it. And she said previously, you’ve alluded to the fact that AFAB people in the church are more likely to come out later in life. I found this especially true in my generation, which is Gen X. Could you please speak more to that? And the reasons why that is and where do we go from here?
And I [00:39:00] think you just started to talking about that. And I totally agree. I am receiving further training to be a sex therapist. And, I think the intersection of sexuality and sex and Mormonism is interesting in and of itself. And then you add on any queerness I’m like, how does anyone work through this? It’s a lot!
Because I remember being in grad school and being in a sexuality course and coming across the idea of good girl syndrome. And that was the idea of the author term that good girls don’t have sex. And so you internalize this and as you were saying, Kate, so often the way that some of us deal with that is okay, good girls don’t have sex. So I’m just going to cut off my sexuality. I am not a sexual being until I get married to my husband. Then I can flip the switch and I’m good to go.
The reality is that isn’t what works for most people. I remember being in class and saying, I picture myself on my wedding night in tears with [00:40:00] my husband being like, I can’t do this. I can’t just flip a switch. And this part of me that I’ve cut off my whole life suddenly being okay. How do you go from no, no, no, to go, go, go? And I mean, that was before I even realized I was queer. You add in that? Whew! And so that’s my initial thoughts. And what I see with a lot of people is because a lot of AFAB people just cut off their sexuality, they never really take the chance to examine what is my sexuality, because I’m not a sexual person. Then once I am a sexual person, once I am married, then maybe they start to look at it, which tends to be a little later in life. So they may be come out later.
Kate: And I don’t think this is an experience soley for Latter day Saints or people who grew up Latter day Saint. I think that this is a a global trend as well as especially a U.S. trend to, to say you’re not a sexual being until you’re married. So I agree. I think that this is part of that [00:41:00] later in life process.
Colette: It looks like we did have a question come in on the Q&A, from someone one who’s here and they say I’ve held callings all my life from young women’s to adulthood. How do people choose between being in a relationship and being fully involved in church?
Whew, what a question!
Yeah, I’m not. I wish it was an easy answer, honestly. And I think that’s what I alluded to earlier is I felt like I had to choose. I have to choose between being a good Mormon or being with this woman I love that I’m dating. It was either/ or. I have to either be queer or Mormon. There’s no way to integrate.
And that was a really rough place to be. And sometimes it is. I feel like we still get that messaging from outside of you’ve got to choose one or the other, that leadership roulette. If you’re dating someone, maybe you’re not then welcome to come to church or [00:42:00] to take the sacraments or to hold a calling. Whereas others might be fine. I’m not sure what your thoughts are, Kate. I wish it was an easy answer. This is why my therapy caseload’s always full.
Kate: Yeah. That’s not an easy answer. It’s also it’s also From the history’s perspective. Okay, Colette got to do her mental health perspective. Let’s go, let’s switch to history perspective in thinking about the history of marriage, the history of The law of chastity. The law of chastity is really interesting. If you haven’t looked into the history of it. Bradley Talbot and I’ve tried to like really locate where it comes from because the wording really is introduced in the temple, but not introduced into the temple till after 1912.And so I can give a a paper on this.
Colette: I did not know that. Can we like do a future episode about this? I’m fascinated.
Kate: For sure.[00:43:00] Yeah. So after 1912, so before 1912, the wording in the temple, it’s hard to understand what the wording of the temple is because it wasn’t written down. You would just had to memorize what the temple wording was from Brigham Young. That was Brigham Young’s thing. We’re not going to write this down. But after 1912, the wording is something about virtue. What is the virtue? You need to be able to keep yourself virtuous or something like that.
And then it changes to the law of chastity. I think that for me, recognizing that and looking into, and thinking about the law of chastity, really for me, helped me think through how I felt about it and what it meant because then you get the policy change at BYU, right?
So you have BYU in first you have the church in 2019, getting rid of their 2015 exclusion policy. And then the BYU [00:44:00] saying, okay, we’re going to get rid of our specific clause about homosexuality out of our honor code. And then it leaves us all in limbo. I don’t think that we are really, we focus too as much as we should on how much in limbo we still are after 2019. What the law of chastity entails, what it looks like. And I think that the church has purposely left that pretty open. For such a thing as Bishop roulette the bishops get to decide what’s going to happen to folks. And so that’s why Colette’s talking about her relationship. It’s totally whatever the Bishop thinks about as the law of chastity, however, the Bishop interprets the law of chastity, however, the honor code interprets the law of chastity. So I think that the church actually leaves a lot of room for us to think about this for ourselves. They’re just not going to tell us that. They’re not going to say you[00:45:00] have this room. They’re just going to say you have to keep the law of chastity. So I think that when you’re in that space of trying to decide, where, what am I going to do? How am I going to go through this? You have to also think about who your leadership are and how much you want to give of yourself and your private life to that leadership.
There’s a lot of times that we think that the leadership is entitled to all of our internal thoughts and our feelings and what we do in private when the leadership isn’t necessarily entitled to all of that information about ourselves. So this is a personal journey for everybody. And I encourage everybody to also look at, look into what the church has said over the past four years or three years, since 2019.
Colette: And for me, I think a really important, important part of my journey was realizing it was my [00:46:00] life. I felt like for a really long time, I was living it for other people’s expectations for me. And it’s so easy to do that. I think as Mormons were raised to be people pleasers. And then if you are AFAB, you get a double dose of that. And just realizing it was my life to live. And I was being torn in two, and it wasn’t working to have to choose between being in a relationship and being in the church. And so I had to figure out how I could integrate in a way that worked for me. For me, that looks like I’m not technically active right now, but I will always identify as Mormon. And I’m not in a relationship right now, but I’m definitely queer and I see myself ending up with not a cis man. I have no idea where this journey is going to lead for me. And I don’t know where your journey is going to lead you, but it’s the [00:47:00] journey of a lifetime to figure out your path and trust that.
I think we’ve been conditioned to not trust our own experience. And so being able to lean into that, trust it, trust that you, you know what’s best for you and you need to do what you need to do. To stay alive. If you’re feeling torn in two, do what you need to do to stay here. We need you.
Kate: Absolutely. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah. We need everybody here. I think that’s one thing that I would really like to emphasize is that we need to side with queer people. We need to be able to support and uphold queer people and queer people are going to choose different paths than we ourselves as queer people are going to choose. There’s not one path and we have to support one another in the decisions that we make and recognize that we’re all trying to make the best of sometimes really hard situations. Sometimes where it doesn’t feel like [00:48:00] there’s going to be an answer to something. And we have to hold space and decide. We have to actually decide that we are going to side with and affirm and uphold queer people who are making different decisions than we’re making, because they’re just, they’re trying to do the best that they can.
Colette: That’s so important and hard when we are in a church that can be pretty black and white, while being queer, we live in the gray. And so being able to just affirm that everyone is on their own journey. And that’s what’s best for them and give that space, I think is beautiful.
Kate: Absolutely. We have one more queer joy. Maybe we can share that. And then we can wrap up.
So Scott says my queer joy this week was getting to share my experience of my life and spirituality during a PFLAG meeting. I assume that’s [00:49:00] pride flag meeting. Do you know what a PFLAG is?
Colette: PFLAG is parents, family of lesbians and gays. Like it’s just an organization for allies of queer individuals.
Kate: Good to know and thanks Scott for bringing that up. Didn’t know what that was. Okay.
Scott was able to show his life, share their life and spirituality. It was nice to hear so many different stories. I love those meetings. Also sharing my story to a few survivors and family members from the Pulse shooting during a volunteer appreciation event. There was a sense of unity and also a realization of how much has changed since the tragedy. So many wonderful organizations that came from that to help the LGBTQ plus community, including that that I’m helping here by my hometown.
Thank you, Scott, for first of all, sharing and for also doing that work because I think that is what we’re all trying to do. What Affirmation’s trying to do, [00:50:00] what Called to Queer is trying to do. We’re all trying to start communities. We’re all trying to understand one another and make space for one another.
Colette: Love that. Yeah. So grateful for this opportunity. And so grateful for the opportunity to talk about queer joy. We definitely encourage you, if you aren’t already, we’d love for you to join our community, in addition to Affirmation’s. Follow along when we post new episodes each Monday at midnight. Monday morning, Utah time. We’d love to have you. We have an Instagram and Facebook @CalledToQueer, but we’ve really appreciated this time with all of you. And I think Kate, was there anything you wanted to say as we wrap up?
Kate: No. Just thank you. Thank you to Affirmation and thank you to everybody who commented and participated. That’s what makes these things work is that everybody participates.
Joel: Kate and Colette, thank you so much for hosting your first live Called to Queer with [00:51:00] us during Affirmation Connections. I have loved listening to the session and hearing you respond to the people that are here. Thank you for everyone who joined us for this session.
We have two more sessions for Affirmation Connections. The next session happens. Yes. At the top of the hour which is the sloths story hour. And if you’re curious, please join us for an hour of story sharing. A lot of it will actually relate to some of your final comments tonight as I was listening to you. So that is great. And then we have our final session of Affirmation Connections, which an evening with Carson Tueller, former Affirmation president and nationally recognized speaker and presenter and personal development coach. Thank you both for being with us for this session.
Kate: Thanks Joel.
Colette: Thank you so much.