Colette: Hello and welcome to Called to Queer, where we hold space for the queer Mormon women, gender queer and inter sex experiences. I’m Colette and my pronouns are she/her.
Kate: I’m Kate and my pronouns are they/them.
Colette: Today we are interviewing Kyle Ashworth and we’re so excited for this conversation. But before we jump into that, we wanted to start off by seeing what brought us Queer Joy this week. So Kate, what brought you Queer Joy this week?
Kate: Oh my gosh. I’ve got so much queer joy this week. I can’t even, can’t even contain it all. So I am working on my dissertation and I’m working on a project where I’m exploring all of the archeology reports in Romania from like 1950 to 1979. And I’m going through and finding like, Here’s all the times that [00:01:00] skeletons have or, or human remains have a gender. And so that’s super problematic in archeology. And so just going through and feeling confident in how much I’ve learned about gender and being a actual expert in saying, This is problematic and here is why. And being able to explain that and write that out has brought me a lot of joy. It’s brought me a lot of confidence. It’s made me feel like, yeah, we’re moving somewhere. We’re moving somewhere important in this work. Not just our work, but in the broader scientific world.
Colette: That’s so cool. I love that so much.
Kate: Thank you. All right, Colette, how about you?
Colette: My queer joy was my girlfriend and I went on our first road trip, just the two of us, and we went to St. George for a last minute excursion. We’re recording this beginning of November and we went down to see the last thriller performance from Odyssey Dance Theater at [00:02:00] Tuachan. And it was just so fun.
We got there Sunday night. We came back Tuesday morning, but just spending the day in St. George being a queer couple and getting a few odd stares, but just being able to be ourselves and not be scared, neither of us needing to hide anymore. That just brought me so much queer joy.
Kate: Absolutely that is, that is queer joy. That
Colette: I know that’s the epitome in my mind.
Kate: when you can exist in public,
Colette: We don’t ask for much. We just wanna exist in public. Please.
Kate: Yeah.
Colette: how about you Kyle? What was your queer joy?
Kyle: I was just thinking of that. Preparing for this podcast episode brought me a little queer joy. Just because I, I kinda like talking about and interacting in this queer space. I think Kind of to dovetail what you’re talking about, Colette, the idea of being able to show up in your true, [00:03:00] authentic and whole self is pretty amazing.
Maybe a second part of my queer joy was also uh, listening to your last podcast episode with Madison Tenney. There was some queer joy there. Colette talked about Jay and I’s Wedding, and there was some holy envy there. I was able to listen to your reaction and, and some of the thoughts that you had surrounding I wanna say less of a wedding and more of the event that we put on.
So I was pretty excited about that. Just be, just to hear those discussions and, and what meant something to you. And then overall that exactly what we wanted to do, to do with our event and our wedding was achieved. The idea that there was visibility and there was connection and it was gay general conference and all those things that we really wanted. The, that we nailed it so that, that brought a smile to my face for sure.
Colette: You totally did nail it. And you did get a few shout outs in that podcast episode. Cause in addition to that, also talking about your involvement, helping with the Back to School Pride Night, both you and Jay. We’re excited to have you on to hear a little bit about your story as well as then this really interesting project that I don’t think as [00:04:00] many people are aware of as they should be.
So before we jump into all of that, can you just give us a little introduction to your Queer Mormon story? For those of you people who, for some reason or another have not been able to know the Kyle Ashworth?
Kyle: Oh boy, that, that sets a very high bar. I really, to be honest, I’m, I’m just as remarkably normal as they come. My, my story isn’t different than a lot of other people’s. We were raised in a church that Mormonism in particularly, it was a high demand religion that expected a lot of its members. And contrary to the popular belief that high demand religion also included people who weren’t always straight.
And I was one of them. And navigating that world was wildly difficult. But I clung to the Mormon message the best I could. And that was serve a mission, get married, have children, and all of this goes And that was really the path that I followed for so much of my life.
I served a mission, an honorable [00:05:00] mission. I served in Michigan, so the distant and foreign land of Michigan in the United States. Had great experiences there, very successful mission. Come home from my mission and reluctantly began dating. Knowing that that was the next step in, in my journey. I, like many Latter-day Saint missionaries knew that if I served honorably all my heart might mind and strength as we talk about, that this would be taken away from me.
That was my hope, that I would no longer be gay. Then uh, when I come home from my mission and realized that wasn’t the case I realized again that I hadn’t followed all of the patterns. I had served a mission, but marriage was the next step. So I did get married in the temple. We ended up having four kids, and to my surprise, even after four kids, I was still wildly gay.
So, I needed to reach out and start finding people who were like me particularly married, gay Mormon men in mixed orientation marriages that were active in the church and still trying to make it work. And I was trying to [00:06:00] figure out what it was, what the key was. How, how were they making all of these things work, copestheticly? What tools did they have that I didn’t have?
And that ended up leading me out of the closet and into this world. And this is a world that I never expected to be in. I mean, to be very frank, I didn’t even want anybody to know I was gay. So how on earth could I go from, In 2017, being closeted, being called into the bishopric, coming out to my wife, then divorcing, and then starting a podcast and becoming a very vocal public figure in this space.
I mean, to me it’s a whirlwind. How this happened is still beyond me, but it, it, it did and, and I think a lot of what I’ve been able to do with my platform and in my advocacy in this space really has, has come down to putting a relatable, normal perspective to this topic.
Too often when we consider the discussions of sexual [00:07:00] orientation or gender identity, we think of, of the fringes were out on these distant areas that nobody wants to venture into because they’re too weird or too taboo or too secret or, or too promiscuous. But I wasn’t interested in any of that.
I was interested in the real lived experiences and the normal stories of genuine, decent, regular people and highlighting and showing, especially a church who has spent much of their time advocating against people like me or creating narratives against people like me. I, I needed to defy that narrative and show that there are very good, honest, happy, spirit-filled, joyful people on this side of the aisle as well.
And if I could defy that narrative, then I think it would make or compel a church or its members to second guess exactly what they once believed about people like me. And so that, that’s really kind of my quick version of the story. And [00:08:00] there’s, plenty of other inroads and out roads that lead or weave through that story.
But generally that’s what I wanted to do. I, I wanted just to create a place where we could be normal. We could be as our, as we are. And live to the fullest measure of, of our creation and show that we are not all, all the things that we have been talked about or talked to in Mormonism.
Colette: I love that so much, and I love the work that you’re doing. I think seeing you create this space is partly what gave me and Kate the like, Oh, we can create a space too. And there is space for us. For those listeners who don’t know, can you talk a little bit about the space you have created and your podcast?
Kyle: Yeah, So I it took me, I should back up just a little bit. As I kind of navigated out of the closet through this, I think there was two closets, two doors that I had to go through. One was to understand, accept and realize my sexual orientation and know that I was okay being gay.
The other [00:09:00] part of that closet or door that I had to go through was understanding how that fit within my faith tradition and my religion. And so I was navigating, I, I hate to call them faith crisises or a crises. I, I was just navigating a journey of faith and how something happens to you when you become authentic and that’s, you reanalyze everything that you’ve once been taught.
There’s a great book called The Velvet Rage that was written for gay men in particular. And there’s, there’s some really great chapters in there about authenticity. And when someone gives you praise or accolades for something that you do, and you did those things behind a fortress, behind a mask, it’s really difficult to accept Uh, and genuinely embrace that praise.
Because what happens on the inside is you’re telling yourself, Well, if you really knew who I was, you wouldn’t accept me for these accolades. If you really knew I was gay, you would [00:10:00] say, Oh, I don’t want anything to do with that person. But really, the inside, the person who, the man behind the curtain, the person behind the curtain that was pulling all the levers, they were gay the whole time.
But this perception, the facade that you built for the world to see only gets to see what you created. And, and so there’s this, there’s this disconnect between authenticity, honesty, and accepting who and what you are. That also leads you into kind of bucking tradition, and looking at what we traditionally have believed in, only because it was traditional.
And it kind of requires us to go back and, and analyze exactly what it is we actually believe in. What it is that we actually know to be truth and what it is that we see. We all want to control our future. And so what do we really want the future to look like? So, with all of that in mind, I, I essentially just wiped the slate clean and started all over.
I often talk about this as being a house of cards. I didn’t blow up the house of cards [00:11:00] in um, A pile of confetti. I just took the cards down one at a time and put ’em all back in the box. And I’ve now spent the last few years going through the box and looking at a card and saying kind of the Marie Kondo effect, Does this bring me joy? Is this something that’s part of my future? And if it is, I use that card as part of my new house of cards and I’ve kind of rebuilt. So part of that rebuilding was stepping into Affirmation, which was, which is a group that is a faith affirming, faith adjacent, kind of a big tent organization.
Kate’s well aware, we’re all well aware of what Affirmation does and, and the, the impact that it had. But that was my, that was my soft landing. I was able to kind of fall out of the closet and in a very real sense, out of the church at the same time. And Affirmation essentially scooped me up. It gave me an opportunity to be among people and with people who were similar to me with a faith tradition in Mormonism.
From there, to [00:12:00] answer your question, Colette, this is a the long short, long story short I, I realized that one of the things that I had clung to so desperately while I was still in the closet were, again, the stories, the real lived experiences, of the queer community. Even though I didn’t know them, I didn’t personally meet most of the people that I, the stories that I, I had experienced to listen to, they meant something to me. And they, they connected. And so the Gay Mormon Stories podcast, which was a podcast that was opened or created with the Open Stories Foundation, was one of those lifelines, really. It was a resource to me as I was closeted and, and listening to these real honest, candid stories.
Well, During my journey coming out of the closet, John Dehlin and the Open Stories Foundation, at that time it was Daniel Parkinson, who was the host of, of the Gay Mormon Stories podcast. They just stopped. They just quit. And there were no more updates to the podcast. And [00:13:00] I felt like as I finally got on my own two feet, and I’ve said this many times as I’ve spoken to different groups, this is the airline analogy that I often use.
When we fly, part of that safety protocol, the safety message that you receive, is that it’s important for us to secure our, our own oxygen mask before we help other people. And as I got to that point where I realized that I finally felt okay on my own two feet, and this is, this was a couple years into this journey. I’d come out, I divorced my wife. We had created an very amicable divorce. I had a good relationship with her, a great relationship with my children, my coworkers and just life had finally settled to a part to a point where I thought I’m okay and I’m going, I’m going to survive. I revisited this idea of, of creating space for the queer community again.
And that’s where I reached out to the Open Stories Foundation and asked if they were going to revive the Gay Mormon Stories podcast.
In an unplanned turning of [00:14:00] events, they ended up gifting me the podcast. And John Delin and the Open Stories Foundation just handed it over and said, Run, please take it. Make it amazing. At the same time, if you remember Church History, President Nelson wanted to change the name or ensure that the Latter-day Saints no longer called the church, no more Mormon vernacular. So I thought this would be a great opportunity to rebrand the podcast. And so, I took it from the Gay Mormon Stories podcast to Latter Gay Stories, which I think was even punier For sure.
Colette: Oh, it’s brilliant
Kate: Yeah. Yep.
Kyle: I’m not sure if the church still prefers Latter Gay Stories, if I should just run back with the old name. But it, it was, it was tongue in cheek. I thought it was clever. It was catchy, but it also, it took the Affirmation, big tent approach to this topic.
And, and that’s one part of the name that I, I’m not overly in love with. Sometimes people will avoid listening to the podcast because they think it is just another [00:15:00] story about a Mormon who’s trying to make it work, and they’re stuck in a closet in a rut, and they’ll never accept who and what they are. But I always tell people, I invite you to listen and actually lean into, as Elder Ballard said, listen to and understand the experiences that the LGBTQ community. As a church Mormons, Latter-day Saints they have not done a very good job at doing this, as admitted by an apostle. So let’s listen to the stories.
And, and so I created the Latter Gay Stories Podcast as a platform where people can share their stories exactly where they’re at today. I never want a guest to share their story in soft focus. I never want a guest to share their story as it relates to the covenant path. I want them to share their story exactly where they’re at today. I want them to be candid and honest, and I want them to be vulnerable because if we’re going to make it through and if we’re going to create a new generation of healthy Latter-day Saints who are falling out of the closet every single day, there’s two ways we can do this.
The old way is they fall out of the [00:16:00] closet and they bust every bone in their body, and we have to rescue them in triage. And it takes a year or two, or three or decades to put them all back together. And we have so much life that is lost.
But what if we can allow them to fall out of the closet or fall out of the church, or fall out of their, their sacred spaces in a healthy way to allow them to land on their feet? And they collect themselves. They orient themselves. They realize that their surroundings aren’t as awful as they thought they were going to be. And then they stand up and they’re healthier and they move in a, in a direction that’s best for them, whether that’s back in the church, away from a church, alongside a new church. I don’t care. That’s not the point of the podcast, and it’s not the point of my advocacy.
The point of what I would love for my guests and the audience to see is that they’re not alone, they’re not broken, and that their best days are ahead. They have a future ahead of them that doesn’t need to include broken bones and pain and tragedy and [00:17:00] triage, that they are able to move forward again in a very healthy way.
So that’s really the Latter Gay Stories podcast in a nutshell. And through those stories, we really weave, in a one to one and a half hour timeframe, the opportunity to really see the beginning, the middle, and the future. Where did this all begin? What was it like in the throws of it, and what do you think the future looks like?
And that’s kind of the journey that we take the audience through through individual story. And each are unique and they’re fascinating, and they’re all my favorite. Every one of them. They all have just interesting twists and turns and similarities that I think appeal to a very large audience.
Kate: Before we dive into kind of the bulk of this conversation, we are going to have listeners who are in mixed orientation marriages, whether they consider those to be because they’re bisexual or because they’re gay, because they identify as lesbian, whatever it is, or in mixed orientation marriages and you’re of [00:18:00] a church generation. There are the ways that the church has talked specifically to queer people in generations. And yours, I think, is the generation of, you get married to cure your I guess homosexuality, but queerness more broadly.
If you can talk to people who are currently in mixed orientation marriages, and I think that you even have some resources coming out soon. Some more resources coming out soon about that, can you maybe help guide them through that?
Kyle: Yeah, so this isn’t an easy topic. For those who find themselves in mixed orientation marriages, often what clouds that marriage are statistics. And the statistics show that the overwhelming majority of mixed orientation marriages fail. The statistics in the research shows that being in a mixed orientation marriage the, the level of happiness or satisfaction level, according to the research is equivalent to someone who suffers from a debilitating [00:19:00] disease like lupus. So when we start talking about mixed orientation marriages, what often is only heard is that it’s awful. It will fail, and you are terrible for trying to pursue it. And that doesn’t really set us on a firm foundation.
There’s a lot of complexity surrounding mixed orientation marriages. I, for one knew, and, and you’re right, Kate, talking about the the messaging surrounding Mormonism of the day. Really in my era, I come home from my mission in 2003, the church really had turned a corner in terms of public messaging. And, and by, say, I say by turning a corner, they just stopped talking about mixed orientation marriages. They didn’t come out for them or out against them, but they were aligning themselves with resources like Evergreen at the time. Evergreen morphed into what is today known as North Star. But instead of this message being promulgated over a pulpit, they were using for lack of a better word, a puppet in these organizations like Evergreen [00:20:00] to kind of dispel the message and to share the message that if kind of this Spencer W. Kimball era, if you just try a little bit harder, and if you work a little more on your marriage, you can make it work.
There also are these infusions of callings temple service, home teaching. All of these very Mormon things would also kind of distract who you really were and how those connections were operating inside of yourself. Overburden yourself with responsibility, service, selflessness. And all these things were keys to overcoming the sexuality part of who you were, that would then allow you to continue moving forward. So that was the message. Even in the early two thousands, surrounding mixed orientation marriages.
Another aspect of this that I found so often that we don’t talk about is the general nature of the law of chastity. When we discuss the law of chastity [00:21:00] within Mormonism, and this isn’t just something that happens to members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Chastity and other religions are are is also a big thing. And specifically no sexual relations prior to marriage.
So many men that I have talked with over the years didn’t know they were gay until after the temple marriage and for some people they’ll, they’ll find that blasphemous and fascinating at the same time. But it’s a reality for Latter day Saint men and women who enter into relationships for the very first time, sexual relationships, for their very first time to find out that they’re incompatible with their partner.
And this is a very real thing. This is a very real thing in heterosexual relationships as well. And we could do a whole podcast on sexuality and the ability to connect with a partner on a sexual level. But to answer your question specifically about mixed orientation marriages, some men and women entered into these relationships not knowing they were entering into a mixed orientation marriage. Not [00:22:00] knowing that they for sure were the very things that they would eventually become or find out about themselves.
And so what do you do at that point? What do you do when you are under these sacred bonds? The sealing ceremony that takes place in Mormonism’s most sacred spaces to find out that you’re not compatible with your partner. And in turn, actually completely incompatible with the revealed gospel, the revealed doctrine within the church.
There’s a lot of dichotomies that start happening, and so you can start to see and understand why this topic is mired in depression and loathing and these feelings of inadequacy. It’s because we don’t have the proper resources within Mormonism to address these types of topics. We also have an anti-divorce culture that says once you’re in this Mormon marriage, once you’re in a temple sealing, you don’t undo it. I mean it to undo that brings shame and guilt and societal [00:23:00] pressure, religious societal pressure, that it’s better that you just stay and make it work than it is to face the reality of who and what you are.
So, the topic of mixed orientation marriage is very complex and unfortunately, too many in these spaces want to address it only as a, you entered into a mixed orientation marriage to fix yourself. I was partially guilty of the fixing yourself crowd. I knew that that was part of the step, that was part of the plan. And so, I don’t wanna say that I used my wife to overcome my sexuality, but I followed all of the necessary prescriptions that had been laid out by my church, which was serve a mission, get married, have kids, and this goes away.
I think we should spend more time on discussing what happens after all of that fails. Then focusing on what will fix me. Unfortunately, my wife, children, families, just like mine, become collateral damage in the wake of, of a mixed orientation [00:24:00] marriage, and we need better resources to navigate that world and help people become healthy again. Again, back to triage. Our discussion about triage, this is part of that triage.
Do mixed orientation marriages work? Some do. And that may come as a surprise to someone that hears me say that, but the reality is there are some mixed, mixed orientation marriages that do work, and there are factors that contribute to that. Levels of sexuality, sex drives. There’s something called a Kinsey scale that isn’t overly used today, but I think is a good metric. Are you bisexual, that means are you kind of in the middle of the scale when it comes to your attraction to, to men and or women? Someone who’s predominantly homosexual as a male they would have a harder time in a mixed orientation as opposed to someone who was bisexual or closer to the heterosexual side of that scale than one who is predominantly homosexual only. So, understanding where you kind of align on what I believe is a very fluid and ever moving scale.
There is [00:25:00] also something to be said about consent. If you enter into, into a mixed orientation marriage, eyes wide open with the consent of both partners, both he and she or she and he or they understanding what type of relationship is being formed and the basis by which that marriage will grow, then I believe that there are some mixed orientation marriages that have the ability to thrive.
Do I believe in mixed orientation marriage is a key to overcoming or converting a sexuality or an orientation? Emphatically no. I have not ever seen a case where someone entered into a mixed orientation marriage with the intent of becoming predominantly heterosexual and that being successful.
So, I think this is obviously a very deep and complex topic, but under those kind of three umbrellas, we get a better understanding as to how mixed orientation marriages work and operate. And if you’re a researcher like Greg Prince who studies epigenetics, which I think is also [00:26:00] fascinating if there, there is a genetic component to sexuality, particularly homosexuality, then a church like Mormonism that pushed so many of its members into mixed orientation marriages would be guilty of creating more gay babies.
And when we have a church that encourages gay people to reproduce and have more gay babies, it would lead you to believe, or lend the opportunity to believe, that Mormons have a predominantly higher percentage of queer members than other faith traditions for that very reason. And I think recent studies at BYU showing that as many as 20 to 24% of its Gen Z and even X and Y, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z populations have a higher than normal percentage of queer people who identify somewhere along the spectrum.
And that identification isn’t just gay, but that identification is not predominantly heterosexual or straight. [00:27:00] So I think it’s fascinating, and I think this is a topic that over the next few years, we will be addressing it over and over and over again because every single family in America, In the world has someone who identifies somewhere along this spectrum. And that may come as a shock and a surprise, and President Oaks and all the others may want to kind of rebuff that. But the reality is every single Latter day-Saint family will be met at this intersection. I promise you. It will happen.
Kate: Absolutely. Thank you.
Colette: So part of your advocacy that people may not be aware of, Kyle, in addition to all this wonderful work you’re doing with Latter Gay Stories itself, is the On the Record document. I’ve definitely told a lot of people about it. I think it’s a fantastic resource. Can you talk to us about how that came to be and all that fun stuff?
Kyle: Yeah, so, part of my journey out of the closet and [00:28:00] also navigating my religious house of cards, what was important to me, what was tradition, what was truth, was learning, understanding and researching the history behind sexuality, gender identity within Mormonism.
And, and really the basis to that came in my own realization that I wasn’t all of the awful things the church had taught about me. I start On the Record with some descriptors that I pulled out of a lot of Latter-day Saint literature. Diabolical, blasphemous, pervert, unnatural, abnormal, an affliction, a transgressor, evil, detestable. These are all descriptors that were used to describe people like me.
I didn’t feel like I was any of those. So if I didn’t feel like I was any of those and my friends didn’t emulate those characteristics, then where did that come from? Where do we get this idea that someone like me in our community are aggressive and brutal and abusive and violent and hopeless and corrupt and filthy?
So I started learning, leaning into the history. I wanted to research where a lot of our Mormon [00:29:00] tradition came from. And this also kind of coincided along with my study of church history and where we got things like Doctrine and Covenants 89, the Word of Wisdom, the tenants behind tithing, the reasons for certain ordinances. Why do we do things in Mormonism, the way we do them?
Also working in tandem was some leadership positions that I had taken with Affirmation, the group that I had mentioned earlier. I was serving as the Intermountain Regional President over five states, the Western United States. My main responsibility was to travel around the Western United States. and start these new chapters of Affirmation. Essentially just knocking on all the doors and finding all the gays and figuring out where they were hiding and bringing them together in a community to just giving them an opportunity to meet each other, to share in a potluck, a linger longer, some group activities, to eventually[00:30:00] again, kind of that threefold mission that I talked about earlier. Let them know that they’re not alone, they’re not broken, and that they have good days ahead of them.
My service to Affirmation at the time also led me through many chapel doors, particularly Bishop and Stake President doors, ward councils, to be able to share with them a message about the queer community that didn’t need to be fearful. That could be educational, and it can also be faith affirming and faith supporting.
The church has done a terrible job at creating space for letting its Latter-day Saint members understand this topic better. They have created very minimal resources to open up conversations about what often old members of the church believe is just a taboo topic, something that we absolutely don’t talk about because it is just disgusting and sick. And all of those descriptors that I just talked about.
And because that existed, I wanted to try to create a pathway into that space and to allow Latter-day Saints to have an open conversation about sexuality and gender identity. So I created two [00:31:00] little resource pamphlets first. One of them was called the Home and Family Guide. And then the other one was a church leader guide. Essentially, it was the same exact information, but I, I used church resources, the few that were out there to have an open discussion about sexuality and gender identity within their ward.
And I started teaching kind of this little course, just a 10, 15 minute layout in a ward council, or to a stake presidency or, to a bishopric meeting. And it’s still available on my website. You can still download it. It’s all hyperlinked back to the church’s resources. Even from the church’s resources, says that we can have a discussion about topics or words like lesbian or gay or sexual orientation. These are all words that are found on the church’s website and I link them back into that.
So the Bishop or Stake President didn’t need to fear that they were outside of their boundaries in having these types of discussions. So very benign, very simple, very soft focus. I use this because I think that’s how Mormonism kind of packages so much of this topic. It needs to be a nice [00:32:00] happy white couple on the the screen in soft focus to make it feel like it is very Mormon. And that’s, I basically used Mormonism against Mormonism and created this pamphlet that looked very Mormon, felt very Mormon, and was in fact very Mormon.
That also led me into On the Record. As I was compiling all of this information and doing all of this research, I kept telling myself, if these stake presidents, if these bishops, if these Latter-day Saints knew what I knew, their opinion on this topic would change dramatically if they saw the chronology, like I was able to see it. If they saw that the church was very, very, very queer loving and queer supportive in its genesis in the beginning of the church, to we move into the Brigham Young era where Brigham Young was castrating gay men.
Then we moved forward into the 1930s, forties and fifties, where we were exiling gay [00:33:00] members of the church to get them out of Salt Lake. So they didn’t need to be visible so the church didn’t have to acknowledge them. To then we get into the Kimball era where there is this big push for reparative therapy or change therapy that we can convert your sexuality.
And then we get into the eighties with the AIDS epidemic and instantly Latter-day Saints have this anti affinity for gay people that we don’t want to be around them, touch them, see them, interact with them for fear that they will inflict or infect us.
And then we get into the nineties where it becomes more of a kinder generation. Where the AIDS epidemic kind of slides away and some church members become decent. I think some of this is attributed to strong women like Carolyn Pearson, who openly discussed her experience as a wife in a mixed orientation marriage, who divorced her husband, who had become very prominent and famous in Mormon circles, who legitimately spoke out for this topic as [00:34:00] well.
And she opened the floodgate and allowed people to discuss this topic, which led us into the two thousands where the church then moved away from a lot of their harsh rhetoric and started moving into areas of kindness and understanding. Sister Okazaki, who had some beautiful things to say about queer families that was unheard of in Mormonism.
We even eventually moved forward to people like Elder Uchtdorf who start creating bridges and wanting Elder Cook at times, wanting to start creating dialogue and discussion around this topic. So really, I I, there was this ebb and flow to our chronology. And if, the Latter-day Saints knew and understood what their leaders were actually saying, and not just the old traditional Spencer W. Kimball, Boyd K. Packer, Mark E. Peterson era of Mormonism and sexuality, then we might find some common ground. And the Latter-day Saints might be able to understand really what their leaders were [00:35:00] talking about.
So I started assembling it. And it was daunting. At the same time Covid was happening. Missionaries were locked up in their houses. And being in this, space where I was running a podcast and both of you I know are familiar with the closeted nature of this topic. How many people reach out to us privately? Who want to remain anonymous? Who, who message us with private accounts, with the most difficult stories. I was reaching into that crowd as well.
They were reaching out to me saying, I served a mission, hoping to put all of this behind me. I wanted to knock doors, not worry about my sexuality. Essentially go to work and I’m stuck in my apartment and we can’t knock doors. We can’t go out and interact with people. We’re not tracting. I can only sit here in my apartment with my companion on the internet and it’s eating me alive. I needed to just forget about who I was and that’s not happening.
So that there was that crowd as [00:36:00] well. And I felt compelled to reach into that world too, these closeted gay Mormon missionaries who were trying to do their very best, who were hoping that their mission would fix them and that wasn’t happening for them. And really surrounding all of this is just that hurt, that pain. And what eventually leads to suicidal ideation and triage again.
So, I, I just dug in and I put On the Record together. I just started assembling all of the quotes. And I knew because of my former training as a Mormon that nothing would be believable unless it was sourced. And Latter-day Saints would not take On the Record serious unless they could click the link, because clearly you have taken all of these quotes out of context. That is probably one of the most famous, aside from of this I bear testimony, that is one of the most famous quotes in Mormonism, is that was taken out of context or where’s the whole, where’s the whole source?
Colette: You’re not wrong. So thank you for providing the [00:37:00] sourcing
Kyle: Yeah, I had to. And one of my, one of my regrets is that I didn’t begin the On the Record with quote and end it with the phrase closed quote.
Colette: I think you can still change that and update it cuz you are updating it. I think that’d be a great thing to do.
Kyle: yeah. And that is a little tongue and cheek, but the truth is everything that is On the Record is on the record. I didn’t have to add commentary, I didn’t have to add my own opinion. All that I did was source the quotes that surrounded this topic. And there are, there are so many, and they’re not, it’s not all inclusive either.
There are some things that I haven’t found, I didn’t add. Some that were just regurgitated over and over and over and over again that it was to borrow a theme from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It was just a variation of a sacred theme. They just redid the same message over and over and over again.
So, so generally I just wanted to lay out the chronology and the overall messaging that has, has come from 50 North Temple. Not necessarily [00:38:00] a rogue speaker. I wasn’t looking for some rogue stake president in a foreign city that had said something and now is gonna use that against the church.
I wanted, as the church often says, but whether by my own voice or by my servant’s voice, it is the same. I really wanted to show what the church leaders were saying on this topic. So we really start On the Record in its beginning. And that’s with Joseph Smith. And many people didn’t know that Joseph Smith did talk about sexuality and he talked about what sexual orientation might look like or, or a society with that. We also get into some controversy about Joseph Smith actually being labeled bisexual himself and through some of the history with the Nauvoo Legion and what was happening in Nauvoo at the time. And John C. Bennett, who was Joseph Smith’s physician has some discussion and in fact, publicly called Joseph Smith bisexual. And claims to, on the record had shared an experience where Joseph Smith was found in what he deems as a [00:39:00] compromising experience. So I have that sourced and linked into On the Record.
Then we move forward through, we don’t hear much until we get into the Brigham Young era. And I mean, I could go all the way through this, but just highlights. Brigham Young moves the Saints to West, to Zion, and how do they deal with things like sodomy, which at the time there were no sodomy laws in Utah or the area of Deseret as previous state of Utah was called. There were no sodomy laws.
And so how did Brigham Young kind of unfold that and was there actually a need for sodomy laws? In many of the perceptions of early church leaders buggery as it was called, at the time didn’t exist because the people in Zion, in Deseret, were Zion people. They weren’t infected with the disease of buggery according to Brigham Young and the apostles at the time.
So laws against sexuality were never enacted until the Latter-day Saints showed up and they came out of their closets, [00:40:00] or in many circumstances were forced out. So 1857, 1858, 1859 were mired with these stories of castrations and Latter-day Saints who were being exiled out of the community because of their sexuality.
We get to Parley P. Pratt, who also talked about the spirits and gender identities of humans. Brigham Young even talks about transgenderism and we also know through written stories that they were people in the Salt Lake Valley who were actually transgender and who were passing so well that people didn’t even know that they were transgender until after their death.
That also shook Latter-day Saint communities because they knew, interacted with and loved transgender people and they didn’t even know about it. And others they did know about. Some of them were so well known. And so, and I air quote this toxic to Mormonism that Brigham Young exiled them completely out of Zion. Some transgender folks were taken out of [00:41:00] Utah completely and moved to Portland, to California, to Hawaii, and their children were taken from them and, and adopted to other families. These stories are on the record. These stories exist and you can read them and, and they’re, they’re harrowing and, and difficult.
We get to Joseph F. Smith, who served his mission in the Sandwich Islands, which are now known as the Hawaiian Islands today. Joseph F. Smith spends a lot of time understanding the Māori and Hawaiian cultures, which were very open to third, fourth Spirit people. People who represented multiple genders. Also a Hawaiian word aikāne, which was the Hawaiian word for being gay.
We learned later through On the Record and the journals of prophets, Joseph F. Smith in particular, that there were sons of church leaders and prophets who also were gay. I think that’s fascinating as well. John Taylor’s son, Bruce Taylor had met with the First Presidency. In Joseph F. Smith Journal, he writes that Bruce Taylor was aikāne, that Hawaiian word for [00:42:00] gay. In On the Record, I have a copy of that journal, that particular journal page from Joseph F. Smith that details his interview with church president, former church president John Taylor’s son, admitting that even the president of the church isn’t a void of this intersection either, that even the president of the church has a son who is gay.
We then move into the 1860s, seventies, a name that is familiar Brigham Morris Young also known as Lady Pattirini. A drag queen. Son of the prophet turned Queen Brigham Morris Young. And yes, that is Brigham Young’s son who dresses up in drag. And doesn’t do this in all of my research because he identifies as anything other than male, but lands credence and an ode to this community, which also was kind of vaudeville at the time. This idea of bridging the gender gaps and crossing both sides of those bridges in [00:43:00] exploration and in entertainment.
We learn of, through On the Record, of stories of Louie Felt and May Anderson. These women were the creators of the primary program who also wrote and created the Children’s Friend magazine. It may come as a surprise that for 40 years Louie and May live together. They also shared the same bed together. They were in all circumstances and in almost all Mormon circles believed to be lesbian. And they were what has often been called the David and Jonathan of Mormonism. The ability to have the sacred and special relationships that weren’t deemed as just sexual deviance, but an example of a lesbian relationship that could work in harmony with the gospel. And so here where this David and Jonathan of the Primary. Uh, In Mormon circles that I think is a fascinating story.
We move forward to [00:44:00] Oscar Wilde and, and calling out some of the early church leaders. He was very effeminate, ends up being arrested in England for being a homosexual, but comes to visit Salt Lake. Looks at the Tabernacle and calls it an upside down disastrous soup kettle. Doesn’t have a lot of favorable things to say about Mormonism. And in turn, Mormonism didn’t have very many favorable things to say about him, especially his interest in men. And so the church really turned against him.
The irony here though is that in downtown Salt Lake, as Oscar Wilde is doing this performance, the front row, which is typically lined with women with these daisies in their lapels, in each of these locations that he visits, when he comes to Salt Lake, something different happens. And here were all these queer Latter day Saint men on the front row with daisies on their lapels, an ode to his sexuality and their connection to him. And that astonished church leaders. So much so, the Deseret News comes out and writes an article about how, [00:45:00] how buggery this, this is, how the gays have infiltrated the Zionistic Society, Mormon Societies.
That then leads us into a new era of the church. Joseph Fielding Smith, who then, as a result, believe of as a very direct result of what Oscar Wilde exposed in Salt Lake City, Joseph Fielding Smith’s discussion about gender and that there is no gender in heaven. That gender only exists in the highest form of the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom. Everybody else, their genitalia will be wiped away during the resurrection. This really lends a lot of what Joseph Fielding Smith was discussing and teaching back to this anti Oscar Wilde era.
The church then moves into very, very difficult and interesting methods. And that is with the advent of David O. McKay, J. Reuben Clark, Mark E. Peterson, Charles Olson. What the church now does is they start to realize, [00:46:00] and this is post McCarthyism, that the church has a problem and that there are Latter-day Saints who are gay. And we don’t know about them, so they begin a secret surveillance system.
This is something that a lot of Latter-day Saints don’t know. Fortunately I have all the receipts they’re in On the Record. But the church ends up surveilling members in the Deseret Gym. Where the Conference Center is built now, the Deseret Gym was on that site. They tore down the Deseret Gym to build the Conference Center. But that was a popular cruising or hangout spot for queer Latter-day Saints to meet. And when the church found out that that was happening, they started surveilling their gay members and secretly excommunicating them.
They didn’t want to make public this topic at all. So they had an office downtown on Main Street that was a quiet no logo, no marqui office. But that’s where this secret surveillance was being tackled. They had employed the Salt Lake City [00:47:00] police chief. The church had used judges and other officials to, if someone was arrested on lewdness charges or charges of masturbation or public indecency charges, and they were known to be latter day Saint, those judges, those police officers, those court officials would then transfer that information to the church and then the church would do its own surveillance.
We know this surveillance went on for many, many years. It ended up being transferred or refitted into a organization that’s still exists today in Mormonism called the SCMC, and that is the Strengthening Members Church Committee. And there is still a secret society that exists at 50 North Temple, and I don’t say Illuminati but we, this actually exists, but it, it’s not a very overly talked about society at 50 North Temple that investigates its members. And keeps tabs on, and it’s not just sexual or gender identity topics that intersect with its members that way, [00:48:00] but a variety of things. Court records, public speaking, advocacy, sexuality. All of these topics are things that the SCMC investigates today.
Out of the original secret surveillance that was eventually transferred to the churches’, schools, and universities. And out of that secret surveillance program was born, something that we now call today the Honor Code office.
Kate: The Honor Code, I didn’t. I didn’t unmute myself fast enough. I knew the answer. It’s the Honor Code.
Kyle: The Honor Code office was a result of the church’s secret surveillance of homosexual members, and it, it was transferred to BYU at the time as a result of them needing a, a vehicle to investigate whether or not its students we’re acting in opposition to its its teachings regarding sexuality.
So again, this chronology is woven through On the Record. We get through the Spencer W. Kimball era, which was really difficult where a [00:49:00] lot of those descriptors that I originally used at the beginning of this episode were coined by Spencer W. Kimball. Disease, contagion, a malady. Those were all descriptors that Spencer W. Kimball used to describe people like me.
The church then went into an effort to rid people of homosexuality. It was important that they not only identify who was impacted by this topic, but then how do we fix them? This shouldn’t be unfamiliar to Mormons because we are a, a society of fixers. We believe that we need to go in and repair. And even I grew up in the Gordon B. Hinckley era that he was the president during my childhood. He often said, Bring with you all that is good and we will add upon it and we will make your faith stronger and better. Mormonism, it is very genesis, in its roots is a society of fixers that want to repair and help people.
That took a clandestine and disastrous turn when the church [00:50:00] started to enter itself into the business of repairing people’s sexuality. And that led again to BYU and its dismal treatment of homosexuals at the campus through its use of aversion therapies, particularly shock therapy.
Where in the late 1970s into the eighties and even into the early nineties, all the way into 1993 tactics were employed at BYU to use shock therapy treatment aversion therapy treatments vomit therapy treatments to overcome homosexuality and to help people become straight.
In all of those studies. And everything that I could find through Ford McBride and Clark and Payne and Bergen and all of these professors and therapists at the time all the records that I could, that I could obtain in On the Record.
And we saw that not only was the church aware of but used the basement of the Joseph Fielding Smith building, the Joseph F. Smith building at BYU as the [00:51:00] home to these reparative therapies. We know that.
Kate: can I jump in really fast and ask you, so in this moment, this shock therapy moment they’re set to examine pornography. Right? Do you know how that was obtained?
Kyle: Two different On the Record resources. According to Max McBride’s dissertation. This is Ford McBride. He actually still is a practicing therapist in Utah County. He did his 1976 dissertation on electroshock therapy and the church and Fair Mormon is adamant that there was no pornography ever used at BYU in relation to the shock therapy.
But let’s go, let’s go through the two, two avenues. We’ll use the one, the aversion therapy, which is the vomit therapy and the shock therapy. In both instances, pornography was provided, or you provided your own pornography at the, at the session. In the aversion therapy program where they would hook you up to an IV and inject [00:52:00] your uh, system with medication that would cause you to vomit upon arousal, that pornography was provided.
According to a lot of the research, the definition of pornography is a little, a little shady. Some people said that this would be like Cosmopolitan, National Geographic type pornography, which showed very scantily clad women and or men. If you were aroused and shown, so you’re male and you were shown pornography that showed other men, and that caused some type of an arousal, they would inject you with A chemical a treatment, the syrup that would then cause you to vomit. So this was kind of the Pavlov theory. You saw something that aroused you, and because that arousal was connected to something that was adverse, we would cause you to vomit. Therefore, you would only wanna vomit when you saw or become aroused by a man.
The other part of this was the shock therapy where not only did they, shock [00:53:00] the system when there was an arousal, but one patent two in particular, were invented and patented from BYU research or from the research at BYU for the actual penile system that would sit on your penis and then it would be the contraption used to electro shock you.
So, I’m not answering your question wholly, but I’m just kind of roundabout saying like there were many systems that were in place at BYU in order to help this electroshock therapy program move forward.
But Yes. In, in Ford McBride’s dissertation, there is a questionnaire and a release form at the end that does state that while you participate, you will be shown pornographic images. And so that is very clear. Fair Mormon and other church apologists have argued that nowhere that would the church ever allow pornography to be shown at BYU in relation to therapy. But even the release form to participate in this therapy included the indication [00:54:00] that you would be shown pornography.
I do know, after interviewing a number of, of men who did go through this therapy or who, who were adjacent to this therapy program one that actually was a therapy helper at the time did go on the record to say that you could either provide your own pornography or that pornography was provided for you.
So, to answer your question, it did exist and you could bring it with you. some felt that bringing their own pornography and then receiving the shocks would kind of help them to also, because it had become so there was this natural, this symbiotic relationship with that particular magazine and to, to bring your own magazine in and then be shocked or, or throw up vomit as a result of that would make them no longer desire that content.
And so it kind of was a twofold way. So fascinating, disturbing, disgusting all at once.
Kate: Can I just ask two more questions? First of all, to establish president of BYU at this time [00:55:00]
Kyle: Dallin H. Oaks.
Kate: and does Dallin H. Oaks know about this?
Kyle: On the record he claims no. He claims as recently as just this year when confronted, he does not recall any aversion or shock therapy that happened at BYU. I think it’s also interesting that we know that last year when Elder Holland spoke at BYU particularly the musket discussion, he opened that with the discussion about how involved the board of trustees and the president of the board, which at school universities, the board of trustees are the quorum of the 12 apostles and the chairman is the president of the church and the, and the first presidency.
I think Holland allowed people to see how the sausage was made in that discussion, in that talk. And he said, not a single ream of paper, not a single vehicle is purchased at BYU or funded at BYU without the board of trustees and the board of directors and the president of the board being well aware and sign off on [00:56:00] those purchases and those acknowledgements.
And I think if I were to take Elder Holland at his word, I would see that President Oaks has a problem. That if not a single ream of paper is purchased at BYU without the Board of Trustees knowing, then Max Mc McBride’s dissertation 14, the testimony of 14 men who participated in the electroshock therapy program. The fact that it was being held at the the Smith Field House the basement of that building would all lend me to believe that not, if not even a single ream of paper or a hair of the head would be lost, then someone at BYU would’ve known about this program. Particularly, the president of byu, but I, I say even more broadly, how many apostles who acted as board of trustees permitted funding for that program. I think it’s highly implausible that Dallin H. Oaks was completely or wholly unaware that was something was happening at byu.
I actually did a [00:57:00] podcast episode with Mormon Stories on this topic. We dove into it after his West Virginia University discussion where he said, This didn’t exist. This didn’t happen under my tenure at byu. So, we definitely fleshed that out and it, in my professional opinion, whatever that is worth President Oaks absolutely knew. And, and whether this is a case of him just having inconvenient or convenient inabilities to recollect. I don’t know. But the on the record is very clear. What is on the record. I, I have the receipts. and you can read for them yourselves.
Kate: So this is a beginning of Affirmation and so there’s a small community of people who are getting together at BYU’s campus. Can you just go over what happens to some of these Um, men? They’re all men who participate in the aversion therapy.
Kyle: Yeah. So this ties back into our discussion about secret surveillance. What the church was doing, and they didn’t call it the honor code office at that point, but it still was this secret surveillance program. [00:58:00] What the church was doing, especially with people who were on the campus of BYU, is they would then route them out. They would find them, they would give them a choice. Either you would go through this reparative therapy program and come out a happy heterosexual or we will notify your family and let them know of your situation. There was a no win in, in these situations for these men.
It’s not a choice. No. This is forced free agency. This is, either you do what we want you to do, or we will ridicule you and essentially drive you to suicide. Which was particularly what was happening. These feelings of inadequacy, the shame, the guilt, were leading these people, to enter into, these therapy sessions. and I say therapy again in the loosest of terms and these repairative therapy sessions in order to fix their sexuality. When that was not working, what do you do? you lie and you tell your church leaders, Yes, it is [00:59:00] working, and I am absolutely fixed. Thank you for everything That you are, you have done for me. I couldn’t be more happier, for a church that believes in continuing revelation than I am right now.
That works until it doesn’t. Then my reality, your reality, the listener’s reality is still exactly the same. after you go through all of these circumstances and, and all of this effort, you still realize I’m gay. And whether I hide that or not, my reality is still the same.
So Affirmation was born out of a genesis of these men who either went through this shock therapy themselves, who had lied in their interviews, to avoid being confronted or exposed as, someone with these tendencies. And they, like many of us, just needed to find their herd, they, needed to find birds of a feather will flock together and they needed to join.
We also shouldn’t dismiss what was happening at BYU at the time. Ernest Wilkinson. The Wilkinson Center is named after this kind and gentle [01:00:00] human. You gotta think of what’s happening at the time. The great Ernest Wilkinson is at the Marriott Center in 1965 saying, If any of you are homosexuals, and essentially you’re within the sound of my voice, we don’t want you at our campus. We don’t want you to, contaminate other BYU students. If you’ll be honest and let us know that you’re gay, we will refund your tuition and have you exit the campus immediately. And that’s when he said, We don’t want you here to contaminate or be contaminated by your presence.
Imagine your school president at the beginning season of your school year, standing up before all a student body saying if you’re gay, you’re a contamination and you are a problem. And we don’t want you here at this school. That is why people started affirmation. That’s why we had. Go back into our closets and huddle together and try to find [01:01:00] community outside of, of our church and outside of the faith.
And unfortunately that hasn’t really changed. There’s still a contamination uh, mentality within Mormonism and we see that is difficult. We see this in chapels all across Zion, where the message at a very grassroots level is that we love you. We want you, we see you, we hear you, we understand you. We’re benefited by you, and we are better because of you. But the closer you get to church headquarters, the more disastrous that message becomes. And at a grassroots level, at a ward, a branch or a stake level in many circumstances there, there’s love and concern and care and community for queer Latter-day Saints. But when you get to the top at 50 North Temple or over the conference center pulpit, the message changes. The message becomes more in line with what Ernest Wilkinson said all the way back [01:02:00] in 1965. We really don’t wanna be contaminated by your presence. If there’s a queer family that’s attending church, we need them excommunicated. Specifically the November 2015 policy. We don’t want to be contaminated by your presence so much so that not only do we not want you in our congregations, but we don’t want your children here as well either. And we’re doing this to protect your children, is the message that we got in 2015.
So the church has been really difficult in its ability to to borrow another Mormon term, to succor its queer community. It has often spent its time running away from its queer community and not running to it.
And so. The genesis of Affirmation really was, if our church isn’t going to support us and believe in us and love us and succor us, then we need to create that community ourselves. And so affirmation was created not as a as a new religious effort, not as a second version to Mormonism, but as a place of community, as a place to [01:03:00] be able to, to stand up and stand proud. As a place to discuss hard things. As a place to mingle with the saints. As a place to meet oft all of these Mormon terms that were beneficial to creating community was exactly the reason why Affirmation has now continued for over 40 years in this perpetual link between the queer community and its history in Mormonism.
And as we discussed earlier, the affirmation is a big tent organization where people are invited, who are adjacent to, within, or never part of this Mormon fabric. The ability to be able to connect with people who are like you is life changing, but also life saving in many circumstances. But a fascinating history. Yeah. That is really the lead in to how Affirmation makes a scene into Mormon vernacular.
Kate: Thank you. Yeah. So then after the [01:04:00] Wilkinson quote, by the way, is the first intro, my first introduction into the On the Record document. I heard somebody say, Hey, Um, This has been said, and here’s a place where you can go see that it was said. And I could click on the link and it sent me directly to this quote by Wilkinson. I think that’s what’s so useful about the document is this is, these are the words that have been actually said. We’d contaminated people, we can link that word directly to where it’s been spoken. So I think that is like a really important and crucial moment in On the Record.
So then after that, what do we have?
Kyle: Well, we get into the Kimball era and that leads us into miracle of forgiveness.
So Wilkinson spoke that in 1965. and ironically in 1969, which is also a very pivotal year for gay rights movements in the United States, miracle of forgiveness is released. And miracle of forgiveness. Chapter six [01:05:00] in particular, attacks this topic full front.
This is Spencer W Kimball, who eventually becomes president of the church, addresses this topic, both gender identity and sexual orientation. Calls it a malady, a disease, a contagion. We use that word again, contamination. This is Satan and his best efforts to destroy the family. There are discussions about change efforts. The ability to overcome sexuality, particularly homosexuality will be found in the bearing of your testimony, in prayer, in righteous church service. You know You haven’t tried hard enough if your knees are not calloused and your knuckles are not bloody and bruised. If you haven’t overcome this, it’s because you haven’t prayed enough. Righteous church service, temple attendance, these are all, prescriptions to fix this disease and this illness. So from the miracle forgiveness, we really get a wave that pushes us through well into the 1980s, this crime against nature, this crime against humanity landscape [01:06:00] really permeates Mormonism.
We also know that there’s a young lawyer to be turned apostle named Dallin H. Oaks, who then begins, his reign over this topic. In 1984, he produces a memorandum that is essentially the church’s way of addressing this topic in the media. If ever asked, he said, we need to have a solid and united front when it comes to messaging surrounding sexual orientation in particular.
So he creates a very secret and what was uh, supposed to be A document that was never to be revealed outside of, that quorum of the 12. I have a copy of it and it is posted in On the Record, and you can read through the 1984 memorandum to church leaders and make a direct correlation as to how that messaging over the next two decades would unfold.
And that was that a single generation of gay marriage, would result in national [01:07:00] suicide. Allowing, gay people to have rights would be equal to. Um, so we have national suicide and a worldwide contagion, but I can’t remember the exact term that Dallin H. Oaks uses.
He essentially lays out that a queer person should not, and especially within the church, be given responsibilities, callings, or jobs that worked with children. or vulnerable youth. So no queer person should be a primary leader, a young men’s president, a young, young woman’s president. But even more particular the, the messaging to civic leaders was that no queer person should be a school teacher. No queer person should be in charge of young children in daycare situations or, or babysitters. they’re pedophiles. Now we get this pedophile nation. we see the prior to that the Boy K packer talk, uh, to young men only, that is addressing the [01:08:00] roles of queer people in society. Boyk Packer in this conference talk that has now been deleted completely from the church’s historical record, says that it’s okay to physically assault a gay person because it’s better that the church members do it than an apostle himself, And he would’ve done it had he had The chance. That we need to rid our communities of these gay people. We need to rid the mission field of gay people. We need not have them in society. So This really is kind of the messaging that is unfolding in this era as a direct result of, uh, Spencer Kimball’s, Miracle of Forgiveness.
And imagine the shock, when the Stonewall riots happen at the same time in 1969. this now gives Mormons even more evidence and more fire that we have an inspired prophet who came out with this book that’s been in the making, and he talks about this, this society that will destroy The family. And not just months later, here comes Stonewall. And what happens [01:09:00] at, in New York, and they’re riots of the gay people and they’re asking for equal rights and they’re asking for a seat at the table.
The church was just buoyed by this turn of events, because now they believe Spencer Kimball’s book to be revelation and the will of of God revealed prior to the advent of, of a national understanding and national advocacy towards this topic.
We move forward all the way into the late seventies, early eighties with, publications like Letter to a Friend, which was another way of, of Latter-day Saints hearing, seeing and knowing that you can change your sexuality via certain things like, righteous church service, marriage. This is where the serve a mission, get married, and have children, that message comes into play.
We start facing things at BYU with the therapists that were hired and we’ll talk, we can talk about Alan Bergen a little later, but, A lot of the message that the church formulates comes out of Dallin Oak’s memorandum, and that is really what leads us [01:10:00] into the 1990s.
there’s a a pamphlet. Some of us remember in the old Ward Council days where we would get our manuals. We would have our, our teaching manuals, the young men’s, young women’s manuals, and they were, they were maroon or green or yellow, and it was just a manual that you carried around in your three ring binder forever.
But There was one that, was produced in the 1980s that was just called Homosexuality. And it was brown, dark taupe manual that told bishops and, stake presidents how to direct their members into mixed orientation marriages. It was specifically discussing how if a gay man came into an interview and disclosed that he was gay, there were six things that, um, six steps that were beneficial to helping un-gay them. And some of those were inviting him to date members of the opposite sex. The same mantra from Spencer Kimball praying, righteous church service, but the most damning was enter into a mixed orientation marriage. That manual was [01:11:00] where it was specifically taught that mixed orientation marriages were the remedy to homosexuality. That was the whole purpose of this book.
When the church realized that Homosexuality, that actual manual was problematic, they formulated a very concerted effort to rid all the chapels, all of the ward stake libraries of this manual. In fact, it was like a book burning, in order to get rid of Homosexuality. I have a copy and I have a scanned copy of every page of that manual On the Record because I believe it’s important for us to see that this is what was on the record. and so you can read through that. You can read the church’s history with mixed orientation marriages as it unfolded in that manual. So, so much of our tradition and so much of just think we’re, we’re talking about the late 1980s, and into the early nineties. Most of the people who are bishops and stake presidents in contemporary Mormonism today receive their training on this topic from [01:12:00] periodicals like Homosexuality.
the church has not done a very good job at recreating new manuals and new periodicals to help untrain that prior teaching, and that is some of the reason why we have this distorted version of what sexuality looks like in Mormonism. it wholly falls back on the church’s periodicals, and it wasn’t helped by, as we move into the early two thousands, in 2006, the church decided that they would make their very best effort at doing a PR statement regarding this topic.
And so they set Elder Wickstrom and Dallin H. Oaks together, in a room, and they, they went on the record for the first time to discuss this topic in a very candid and open discussion about sexuality. Still to this day, that 2006 Wickman/Oaks interview is the official statement from the church regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.
I encourage everyone to, um, to read it. To [01:13:00] borrow temple language, I desire all to receive it. Because this is your opportunity to see really where the church is today. And this is the official statement of the church. Um, This is also where Dallin H. Oaks says it is uh, wise, that parents of gay children not take their queer children into public. Don’t invite them over to your home. Don’t invite them to stay for lengthy periods of time. Don’t go to lunch with them. Don’t allow them to work in areas where children are present. Don’t allow them to be an influence to your younger children. These are all the messages. And this isn’t ancient history. This isn’t Mark E. Peterson. This isn’t David O. McKay, or Spencer W. Kimball. We’re talking about the next in line to be president of the church, in just the very recent history has laid out, this method, for treating gay members or gay family members within the home and within church. It’s very [01:14:00] problematic, but it also is where the church is at.
And so you get conflicting messages. You have the official response that’s found in that 2006, official message. Between Wickman and Oaks, but then you get these fringe members, like Okazaki that we talked about earlier. Or Elder Uchtdorf, who, um, What, in many circumstances, traditional Latter-day Saints today will say, Well, um, they’re not speaking for the general membership of the church. So they were just speaking as men or women who, were speaking from the fringes, but they actually started talking favorably, kindly about the queer experience.
And as Elder Ballard said, in 2017 at BYU, we need to listen to and understand the, the experiences of the LGBTQ community, cuz we haven’t done a very good job at that. And what could we learn from the queer community? And, and I actually believe that, and I, I will sustain that, that what Elder Ballard is saying is very, very true.
So much of what we’ve learned in this space, we’ve learned from non-queer [01:15:00] people. Imagine the surprise when we can hear what it’s like to be gay from someone who is actually gay. And instead of hearing what it’s like to be gay from someone who is straight, what a novel idea.
Colette: what a concept.
Kyle: If we did more of that, imagine where we would be at, at better understanding and listening to the experiences of the LGBTQ community. Imagine as a church where we would be if we actually listened to the lived experiences of the queer community.
Kate: Absolutely. I think what is so compelling about On the Record is that we can see, first of all, that when people say doctrine doesn’t change, that is crap. The second thing is we actually don’t know what the doctrine is. Because you can get Dallin H. Oaks saying something in 2006 And, then him saying something in 2019, when we get rid of the [01:16:00] November 15 policy and he says something completely different. But then, goes back to 2006 rhetoric. Actually doctrine is all over the place and we actually don’t really know what Mormons believe in terms of queer people.
Kyle: You’re right. And, and I wanna be, I wanna be absolutely fair. I’ve really have tried when I created On the Record to be Switzerland. Like I mentioned at the very beginning, I, I didn’t infuse my personal feelings or, uh, where I felt like these messages contradicted each other. I just wanted to lay them out to allow the reader just exactly as you just put together, Kate, so perfectly, the, the, the ability to see that this doesn’t look revelatory at all. This doesn’t look like it’s inspired at all. This doesn’t bode well for a church that believes in continuing revelation, because if it were continuing, then we would build line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. But what we’ve done is two steps forward and nine steps back, and then one step forward and then 12 steps back.
And [01:17:00] then we just move ourselves from November, 2015 all the way into 2019 light years ahead in our ability to recognize and understand the harm we’ve done to the, the queer community. But then in secret meetings that Dallin H. Oaks has held with these firesides all throughout Zion, we, we go all the way back by saying, Don’t come out. Don’t identify, Put yourself back into the closets because this is a, a harm and a detriment to yourself.
So you’re, you’re absolutely right. I’ve always looked for the metric. What, what yardstick do we use? And I look back to the truth and the plan talk that Dallin H. Oaks, October conference of 2018, where he opens up this belief that we should now start believing in living prophets over our dead prophets. So the the contemporary message is more important than the old message. Well, then I say, let’s stick with the new message because a new message is far better for our queer community than the old message. But yet, just like you’ve accurately brought up, the church has this habit of going back and [01:18:00] using old messages that support their bigotry and prejudice. And we’ll use that in the name of dead prophets, to sustain and support their messaging.
So it becomes very, very confusing for not only the queer, the queer community. But queer community aside, this becomes extremely problematic for our church leaders. Because if they’re to minister in a spirit of understanding, They’re sitting across the desk from someone who has studied this topic more extensively than that straight Bishop could have ever studied and understood, and they’re at a point where they’re trying to better understand this part of them as wholly as possible. And they’re relying on doctrine and policy and messaging, that fits their personal narrative, and that is very problematic.
Now, some bishops get it right, and that’s because often they’ve had queer children themselves, or they’ve been queer adjacent, and they’ve been able to recognize the harms that the church has done, and they’re able to minister, minister or succor [01:19:00] these queer members in a much uh, more healthy and sustainable way. And unfortunately we call this process leadership roulette, where you have some leaders that are affirming and supportive and loving and kind and offer callings and support and assistance to these queer members and others who would rather excommunicate them and, and have them out of their pews as quickly as possible so they couldn’t be an example to other people or contaminate other people within their, their wards.
So, I think you bring up a very valid point that I don’t have an answer to, other than we now spend, uh, a lot of our time leading queer Latter-day Saints who wanna stay connected to the faith, to leaders or congregations that are affirming of that, sexuality or, orientation until it’s not. and that usually happens when a new leader comes. Or when further light and knowledge, via a stake president or an area authority comes in and says, We’ve heard about your rogue bishop who’s giving callings to Lesbian Relief Society presidents, [01:20:00] and we are not allowing that to happen anymore. We need that to stop.
And then the journey that pioneers, the queer pioneers pack up their belongings once again and they load their hand carts and they find the next affirming congregation, who will support them and love them and give them sustenance once again. And this is the path of the queer latter day saint.
Kate: That’s the point of the document is that the Bishop roulette, wherever they’re going, Whoever is interpreting the doctrine can get it, can, can find exactly their personal narrative in whatever. The most recent general conferences, whatever. Since 2019, we’ve never gotten a clarification on homosexuality and law of chastity. There are two conflicting things in the manual that are meant to be conflicting so that you can do that as a leader. You can just decide whichever your personal [01:21:00] bias leans and go with that.
Kyle: We shouldn’t be surprised that this is how Mormonism has unfolded. It’s its doctrine and its policy. It it’s good business. So if they’re found to be wrong, or if society moves in a way that restricts the church’s ability to grow, they can always lean into those rogue comments and say, No, we’ve always been Affirmative. We’ve always been, uh, supportive of this community. It just took us a while to get there. it was a heavy lift to get all of, our members on board, but we worked all of these years since insert year, insert favorable quote, in working towards, in betterment of this community.
if it all goes, south or a different direction, the church can say, since our very beginnings, we have been against this community who we’ve always felt was anti-family and always felt was, uh, national suicide or just a single generation of, people like this would result in all of the things that we, we foretold.
So the [01:22:00] church has made a, I hate to say business or an effort out of having discussions of, of disagreement or affirmation on both sides of, of all topics. And that’s where the church has succeeded the most.
I’ve often said like the church’s mantra that we’ll fill North and South America, Joseph Smith’s vision that the church will, will fill the whole earth is then transversed with this idea that only the elect will inherit Zion, that only few will be taught the gospel. So it’s either we fill North and South America, fill the whole Earth, or just a handful of people will become Latter-day Saints. Again, a great example of having a message on both sides of whatever will become the eventual reality.
and as we see, like when in the news And in the media, anti-queer discussions are happening, the church is on board and they are showing their, uh, muscles saying how many organizations they’re involved in and the strength of the family and the propositions they’ve supported, and the money that they’ve been able to, to infuse into political [01:23:00] races.
When that, that light shifts and things become different, then the church backs away and becomes completely silent on the topic where they don’t want to be found at all in any of these spaces. When you have areas like Arizona or other Western states that are litigating within legislations, discussions of, equal, rights, housing rights and opportunity rights and employment rights, the church likes to flex their muscles and say, We did this in Utah with a Utah compromise, and we worked with a queer community. What they don’t say is they excluded themselves from all of those compromises. They gave themselves the ability to discriminate, while other people are supposed to be full inclusion.
So again, this is another example of the church having its ability to both argue for and against the very same topic. It is frustrating. And, I, I think you rightly point out like this is the chronology and as, as we go through On the Record and get all the way until we’re into where we’re at today, and I do have a, a new update coming in the next couple weeks, [01:24:00] which, uh, includes more behind the scenes, more musket, more stake and ward meetings, more obligations and requirements of its queer members. We just see that the church is, is still in this ebb and flow as it kind of tries to get its own footing. And it also, in my opinion, just kind of follows and I hate that Latter-day Saints argue against this, but it does follow societal trend.
The church will eventually become more inclusive by obligation. Sometimes we talk about sins of omission and sins of commission. The church will be obligated to become more affirming. And what that affirming looks like, I don’t know, but just looking through its chronological history. I have an idea of what that might look like. I mean, the marginalized groups within Mormonism, aren’t an anomaly. We’ve had marginalized groups within Mormonism since its very beginning. the church itself was a marginalized organization. Which now has, has went from being marginalized to [01:25:00] marginalizing its members on its own.
So I think that’s problematic for Mormonism, but also a, an opportunity for Mormonism to look ahead and say we can do better. We were the ones who were trot and kicked out of our areas, not believed belittled, and now they are the ones doing the very same thing to a, a certain group of people. And that’s unfair. And It’s un Christ-like, and it’s not becoming of a church and a religion in my opinion, and also might lend an example as to why so many people are leaving the faith and why there’s a hemorrhaging of members.
it goes back to why groups like Affirmation start. Why did I start a podcast? Why did you start a podcast? Why are we discussing this today? It’s because we need not just to survive, but we need to thrive. We need to be in circles And spaces that allow us to live to the fullest measure of our creation. We need to be in places that allow us to thrive as beings and to find joy and to be happy and to seek companionship and all the things that are necessary for, again, not survival, but thrivability. [01:26:00] So those are our efforts.
That’s part of the reason why I put out On the Record And people will often ask like, what is the, what is your very best part of On the Record? If there was anything that means the most to you? And I say the very last page, and I won’t give it away cuz I want people to go read the very last page, but the very last page in On the Record is why I do what I do. I wrote and compiled On the Record for the very last page. Because I think it’s important for people to see, not only the, chronological history behind where the church has been, but what we can look forward to tomorrow. And that very last page is my very favorite part of On the Record.
And it’s a heavy read. And it can be, it can be difficult to get through. It’s not, it’s not something you sit down and scan through, like the Ensign. On the Record is deep. And I want you to fall down the rabbit hole. I want you to click on the links. I want you to read the talks. I want you to read the newspaper articles and the clippings and the periodicals of the time because I want you to get an [01:27:00] understanding as to what your queer family members have had to go through.
And a lot of that trauma and a lot of that pain that has been inflicted upon our queer friends and family members are a result of misinformation and tradition and church leaders inability to understand this topic better. So I hope at the end of the day, people do take the time to make the landscape a little more beautiful, a little cleaner, a little less bumpy and rocky for our queer community and our queer friends.
Kate: Absolutely. Well, we thank you for all of your work. We are especially thankful for On the Record. You mentioned that you hope that people go and actually like click the links. I recently clicked the link to the 1976 Boy K Packer talk that has now been completely erased from the church that has the audience laughing at a hate crime against a queer person. And that laughter means something. It will hit you. Like it, it, it hits you. It doesn’t matter who you [01:28:00] are. You listen to somebody be beat up and everybody laugh at that. It, it will impact you. So, if you haven’t already, we hope that you will download On the Record, the pdf. from Latter Gay stories. Thank you, Kyle, for being here.
Kyle: Yeah, And And So it’s easy to find. I think that’s a great point. Easy to find lattergaystories.org/record. but it’s been downloaded, so many times. You can just Google it now. You can just Google On the Record LDS, On the Record LGBTQ, and it’ll, it’ll pop right up and you can, you can download it. It comes in a pdf so you don’t have to stay on the website, You just download it as a pdf. Save it on your laptop, desktop, whatever, and then click the links at your leisure. And then, I do update it. So you would just have to go back to latter gay stories and, and re-download the link. And I always let people know when I re-update, but I mean, we’ve been downloaded, I started the counter about a year after I posted it on the website, but we’re well over 30,000 [01:29:00] downloads already. And we’re talking about many, many, many wards, stakes. When you combine the total amount of downloads and think of how many stakes that actually represents, how many Latter-day Saints that actually represents, it’s quite impactful that people are, are studying and, and harnessing that information. And I, hope hope that people continue to do, to do that.
Colette: I hope so too. We’ll definitely link in our show notes and on our website on the transcript, because this is such an important project and we so appreciate you giving the overview. and, I don’t think, we can understand where we are as a church now without looking at this history. and so to have this document is so, so valuable, especially as you continue to update it because we know we are not at the end of what the church is saying about it. So thank you so much.
Kyle: Nope. No, thank you. I, I both admire you for your platforms and for the communities that you speak to and for your efforts in this space as well. Many hands make, light work and I think, this is a community effort and I’m, [01:30:00] I’m super happy and grateful to have people, like each of you. and your audience in my corner to help us all continue to, to push this and make life a, a tad bit easier for those Little queer baby Mormons who are still falling out of the closet.
Colette: for sure. And like to borrow a Mormon quote. We’re all lifting where we stand to continue the work forward. So Thank you.
Kyle: Yes, we are all bloom where we’re planted. could go on for hours. Kate, uh, Colette, Thank you.
Colette: Thank you.
Kate: Thanks kyle.
Colette: Thanks for listening. We appreciate you joining us today. If you’re liking these episodes, we’d love it if you’d rate and review called to queer on the podcast player of your choice so that other people are more likely to find us. We’d also love it if you’d share our podcast with a friend who could benefit from hearing these stories. If you wanna contact us, you can reach us at hello@calledtoqueer.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram @CalledToQueer. See you next time.[01:31:00]