Participant #1:
Hey, everyone. This is Patrick Mason. I want to invite you and your friends to come join me and the rest of the Faith Matters team at the Restore gathering happening at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City on October 7. Eight. They promised me this is not going going to be a boring academic conference. There's going to be amazing speakers. I'll do my best. Incredible music, beautiful art, and lots of very cool people. You can learn more and register@faithmatters.org restore. See you there. Hey, everybody. This is Tim Chavez from Faith Matters. In this episode, we spoke with Allison Dayton from Lift and Love, an organization that focuses on strengthening Latterday Saint LGBTQ individuals and families. We met Alison not long ago, and we're so impressed by the spirit and love she brings to every interaction. She tells her story in the episode itself, but she's been deeply involved with the LGBTQ community for many years, first through her older brother Preston, and later through her son. In those interactions, she's lived through the deepest of tragedies, as well as the joy of love, acceptance, and unity. Because of the journey she's been on and the blessings that she says have come into her life because of her LGBTQ child, she wanted to do more to help other families, wards, and leaders support these remarkable children of our heavenly parents. That's why she started Lyft and Love, which has grown into a podcast, support groups, suicide prevention training retreats, social media accounts, and even an online store where you can find lots of unique, simple, and affordable ways to signal love and support to the LGBTQ community. You can find all of that@lyftandlove.org for us. Allison's most resonant message was that an LGBTQ child, sibling, or family member of any kind is a true gift. There are so many blessings that come from having these amazing individuals in our lives and communities. That said, Allison expresses this message much better than we could, so we encourage you to listen to her, share her feelings in the conversation, and with that, we'll jump right in. We really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Allison Dayton. All right, Alison, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. We're really happy to have you here. Why don't we just start with your story? Maybe start at the very beginning. Like, would you talk about growing up? Like, what was your family's culture around LGBTQ issues? And then maybe you can walk us through some of the experiences that you've had throughout your life that have sort of shifted your perspective. Yeah. Okay. So my parents started in the Bay Area. They started their family, and their very first son was Gay, their oldest child. And it's interesting. He came out at 13, which is young. We were living in Utah by then. Okay. Got it. My brother was born in 1960s, so it was a long time ago, and my parents always had just a really, I wouldn't say comfortable idea. My parents were big thinkers. And it's so interesting because the other day, a couple of weeks ago, I was reading Terrell Gibbons new book, stretching the Heavens about Eugene England, and this name started popping up. And I'm like, These are names from my family stories, right? Like these people. So I said to mom, I'm reading this book about Eugene England. And she's like, oh, yeah, dad was in a bishop brick with him. And I was like, wow. So my parents were in Palo Alto at the same time as some of these really expansive thinkers, which I really think helped them because when my brother came out, they just kind of dug in as parents. Now, there was a lot of misinformation around then. It was the mom's fault. She was too controlling and the dad was too distant, and there was all of that, and my parents really suffered from that. But they never questioned their family's kind of bond and their ceiling in the temple. They just knew that that was a real thing and had the real power to keep them all together. I said to my mom once, how come you never worried about empty chairs or we won't be together in heaven? And she said, It never even crossed my mind. Wow. Which is pretty amazing. Now I found out ten years later. So there's five of us in our family. I'm the fourth of five. And kind of by a long shot, preston was ten years older than I was, or nine. I found out when I was 14. So he was like 23, 24. And we're still twelve years away from the family proclamation here. When I found out it was like 1984 or 83. So he came out just to your parents, you're saying when he was 13 and then sort of stayed closeted? Yes. I mean, the bishop knew and he stayed very closeted till he after his mission, although he went on a mission and his mission president knew he was gay because of my our bishop told him, and it was not a good experience. He was in Japan and the mission president was cruel. Like really cruel to him. So that was hard. In general, did you feel like their paradigm was that this was something this was a trial, or this is something that he had to heal? No, not at all. They just thought I mean, clearly it was a trial because it was hard to be gay in the seventies, hard to be a gay man. But I guess they did think that it could be healed because the pediatrician suggested shock treatment at the time, which was part of the treatment system and which they did do. I think there was an idea that for them that he maybe could be healed or that there was something in the brain that they could switch or something, I think. But as he got older, I think they realized, like, this is part of him, like, deeply part of him, and it's not something that would change. And so they just leaned into it. And then the next thought was, how can we make sure this kid is okay? Which was pretty revolutionary back then. Yeah. So I was curious too about the mission president. So knowing that your brother was gay, did he bring that up explicitly with him, do you know? No. I wish I could go back and talk to him. I just know from stories from my mom that and he loved his mission. He was in Japan. He's like six five, and there's this great picture of him in the sea of Japanese people out in the market, and he's like nearly 2ft higher than anybody in the group. It was such a great picture. But he loved the gospel. He loved being a missionary. He loved the Japanese people and the culture, and he was an all in believer. When he got home, were you privy to how he was trying to reconcile being an allin believer and understanding that he was gay? I had no idea until I again, he's nine years ahead of me. So by the time I figured it out. He had graduated from the University of Utah. Gone back east to go to George Washington or to GW. And he came out kind I think he came out a little bit in college. But mostly he left and then he was felt safe. Left the church. Left the church. Had himself excommunicated at 24 and left Utah. And he really never came back. But still loved the gospel and tried to go to church there. He tried to date women. I mean, I think he was hoping he could be changed a little bit until more understanding came that this was just not a changeable thing. I mean, he realized and the damage done to him. I tell people, we have this narrative that says there's something wrong with you. It can't be changed in this life. You're going to have to wait till the next life to be changed. And it's only by the power of the Savior that you can even be like a regular person or a whole person. And it's such a damaging idea to a child that I came that broken. I mean, the implication is then there's sort of this incentive to hurry on to through this life. I already got the body, I'm out of here. And that's super dangerous for these kids. And we're all sent here to learn and to progress and to have experiences. And the plan is to be here first and learn and not hurry on to the next life so that all the things can be made right. And we don't even know what that means for our LGBTQ individuals. I can't imagine of all the people I've met, I can't imagine them without that part of their personality. Especially my brother. It was just integral in his life and his creativity and his way of expressing. When I was 14, I actually just figured it out. I was talking to my mom. I had a birthday card for him that had, like it was like a joke about a eunuch. First of all, why, as a 14 year old, I picked up a card that had a unit on it. I'm not sure, but my mom said and I didn't even know what a unique was. My mom said, oh, don't give them that card. And I said, Why? And she's like, well, that's a unique. And I said, what is that? And she said, well, they're typically like a palace guard who was castrated so that he wouldn't sleep with the harem. And I said and in my head, the words Preston is gay came so clearly. I was sitting on my mom's bed. I remember it, and I looked at her. I said, is he gay? No. I didn't know a single soul who was gay this time. And my mom said, yeah, he has no judgment, no sadness, no nothing. Just yeah. I mean, I was just a freshman or sophomore in high school, and my friends all new. I was really open about it. After I graduated from high school, my mom and dad sent me to live with my brother and his boyfriend in DC. For the summer. Right. I mean, this is right when the AIDS was boiling up, and it was kind of revolutionary, but it gave me this very like they were a very normal couple, and they just normal life. I got to go to normal dinners with other gay people, and it was a good education, but it was really brave on my parents part. Yeah, again, I don't even think they considered, like, that Preston was gay. They were just like, she's causing us trouble, and we're sick of her. Out of here. We need a whole summer without this particular daughter who's a pain. So, I mean, that's kind of how it was in my family. My brother was always there. His boyfriend was always invited. Family parties and trips and gifts and everything. It was just a really and again, I missed the hard years when they were learning how to be parents because there was nobody no guides, not in the church and not in the world, not in traditional handbooks and stuff. So I got there when they had kind of I showed up, or I was kind of made aware by the time they were doing so much better. So it was just part of our life that was our family. And no story, no, like, oh, he won't be with us, or it was just well, us. Yeah. So would you talk about the rest of Preston's story and what happened later in his life? Yeah, so Preston was just doing really well. His life was fun and awesome. He would love to travel. He was just such an interesting person. And then I would say about the same time that Prop Eight he was living in San Francisco when Prop Eight came out, and that put a real thorn in him, like, just a pain that he could not get over. And it just felt so personal to him. And from about that point on, his relationship with the family, his anger towards the church grew quickly, and it was really fierce at some point. So that got worse and worse, and our relationship got more and more tricky. And as he would get more angry, I think I would pull back particularly. I mean, I'll just speak for myself, but I know my mom always tried to stay right in there, but I was raising my babies, and I didn't actually understand totally what was happening, and I wasn't paying attention to it like him. And I just didn't have the heart yet. I didn't know it. It didn't get into my heart the way it was hurting him. And that relationship got worse and worse over the years until the policy on baptism in the church in 2015. After he heard about that, he said to me, you can't stay in this church. And he knew I loved him, but I said, Preston, I can't choose between you and this gospel. This is the way that I relate to God. And from then on, he never spoke to me again. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And then a year and a half later, he took his own life.

Participant #1:
Really. In fact, it's five years ago this week, and my mom just passed away. So I'm pretty tender about all of this right now, but I had some really remarkable spiritual experiences around finding out that he was gone. And I felt like the Lord just sort of parted the veil for me and taught me how different everything was than what we thought. And I just had this feeling after the police officer who I sent to go find him to check on him called me and told me he was with him and that he had gone. We hung up the phone, and I just had this feeling of it was, like, pressed and was right in front of me, but it was happening to me, too. And I just felt this cloak or this weight come off of him any sort of way, and I just thought, wow. Our knowledge is so limited about what happens and about him and our LGBTQ members and even, like, death and the Lord's love for each of us. So part of the really hard part of that was that as we were dealing with Preston suicide, I knew my own son was gay, my oldest son, and I didn't know how to handle what was happening. Gratefully he had a trip planned. So a couple of days after I found out about Preston, actually, my children all dispersed to these different things that they hadn't planned in the summer. And Ken and I could really talk about how we're going to manage this. We weren't 100% sure, but we were pretty sure that he was gay. He was still in high school. He hadn't come out to us. And it's interesting because while he was in, jake had gone to Ghana with a humanitarian project, and while he was there, he felt Preston talk to him and say, I'm here and I'm watching over you. And it was so powerful for me. Jake wasn't accepting. He was still kind of fighting the idea that he was gay. But I saw it for what it was like, this brother of mine is going to take care of my son. Wow. So it was just a remarkable it was such a painful experience, but it was also so full of understanding.

Participant #1:
Yeah. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing. Oh, my gosh, it's just such a beautiful story, and we really appreciate that you'd be so vulnerable in the podcast and let us kind of get this glimpse into your experience. I would love to hear. I know that you do so much work with other mothers who have gay children, and I wonder if you could just talk about a common experience when kids come out. I mean, you kind of felt like you have this in cling, like you thought maybe that this was the case. But is that usually what happens? Or could you just walk through normal emotions that women experience and fathers, too? Yeah, so it's really interesting about, I don't know, maybe half of the parents, maybe a little bit more, get these spiritual promptings. Here's the problem. Because of the way we view LGBTQ people in church and community, let me just go back quickly. So in my brother's being gay in my brother's life and time was such a different thing, so he was thought of as he chose it. He was a deviant. He just didn't care about God or the plan or anything. We had this and it was always gay men, right? It was only gay men that came out. A few women, but mostly it was gay men. And we could look at this adult male and say, you're sinning. You're making these choices that are bad. You're in a front to our family. So flash forward now and really only within the last couple of years. Our children are coming out young. They aren't waiting until postmission age. And this is a really important change that's happened. And I think as members of the church and as leaders in the church, we need to see this change because it's changing everything. When an adult comes out, you think, well, you've just got to get your life back in line, right? When a 13 year old comes out, the parents are worried about this child's health and wellbeing, right. I got to make sure this kid is okay. That was my first concern when we started seeing signs in Jake in junior high that he might be gay was, how do I protect this child? How do I make sure that he's healthy, that he knows that he's loved, that? We started talking about the gospel differently. We just shifted a lot of things. And I don't think we've gotten there yet as a culture and a church. And you can't look at a ten year old and say, you're choosing this because they don't want it. And oftentimes they're very distraught by it. People will say, oh, it's just a face. And these kids aren't telling each other. They are still closeted in a lot of ways. They come out to their parents, maybe to a couple of friends if they're older, 14, 1516. But these are just real things. A lot of parents see these signs early, and so I always ask Moms, like, could it be the Spirit telling you that you need to watch what you say and protect this child once they connect the spirit back into their parenting? Because that's what happens. Like, if you have a gay child who's chosen this and all these things, then it's just bad parenting. But when you realize that God gave you this child, then you get connected back to, I get to go to God for answers, right? He's going to help me. Our heavenly parents will help me through this. And as they start to see it, they think, yeah, it probably was the Spirit saying, See that? Did you notice that? I want you to watch out for that and you need to protect this child. And that's one of the biggest things that we work on with parents, is shifting them from they go into this like deer in the headlight. I don't know how to parent a gay child back to it's the same thing you pray, you ask God how to move forward and what should we tell this child about dating? Or what should we tell this child about who they are? And so we do a lot of that work. We don't have a prescription. It's all individual based. And we try and just really work on the parents and bringing them back to the gospel back. That you are a family that fits in the gospel. You are the family that you get to go to God with this. Yes. You mentioned the work that you're doing, and we will have talked in the intro about Lift and Love, but could you maybe tell that part of your story you mentioned earlier? You said at one point in the story when you were talking with Preston like this hadn't entered your heart yet, and at some point it did. Could you talk about that and how that transitioned into the work you're doing now? Yeah, it enters my heart more and more all the time. Jake came out right after high school and went right down to BYU and the first April we had Pride Month in April back then, and this was, like, four years ago, and he brought a bunch of friends home to go to the Pride parade. It was there first. And a couple of the kids weren't in the LGBTQ community, but the rest of them were. There were about ten or so. And as I sat and made breakfast with these guys and talked to him, I asked him about their families. And almost none of the children had support. In fact, one of them wasn't even a member of the church and was going to BYU with no support from his parents. One of them had been kicked out. They had no support. And as they left the Pride, I prayed. I thought, Somebody's got to do something. Like, I've got to do something. So I started this little lift and love. It was supposed to be inspirational. It was supposed to teach people kind of some of the things that I'd learned growing up in a LGBTQ family. And I remember one day, Richard Osler and I share our children are married, so we talked about this quite a bit. And one day I said to him, richard, you have to tell the stories of the moms. You've got to do this. You've got to get in there. And he's so sweet. He was like, yeah, you should do it. All right, that makes more sense since I am a mom. But I realized right away that the key to this is the moms. And not to malign fathers, but it's interesting how the mom's heart switches fast, really fast. Like, all of a sudden, this child, especially if they're young, it's like, I have to protect this child. And the dad generally is like, more towing the lines, and These are the rules, and it takes man a little bit longer. It takes dads a little bit longer. They usually get there to move out of the rule base into this middle ground. So, I don't know, I just felt so strongly. It was the mothers that would really be the ones that would not only protect their children and raise them to be very healthy, because my brother's life, that was a generation of really not healthy kids. And we want our kids to be healthy and raised in the gospel and loving God and connected to God. I want to move on from this. But I saw this in the Trevor Project yesterday that they said that one third of LGBT youth let me make sure I get this right only one third experience rental acceptance, with only additional one third experiencing an additional one third experiencing actual parental rejection, and then one third not disclosing their LGBTQ identity until they were adults. And then the study also found that LGB, at least LGB youth who report high levels of parental rejection were eight times more likely to attempt suicide. And so that's so jarring. I just can't even fathom those numbers. But I imagine that, especially in the church, that the conflict that the parents are facing is that they think that they have to choose between spiritual health and physical health and that they're experiencing some sort of, like, moral dilemma. So can you talk about that? Do you really think that that's a false dichotomy? Is there a way to have both? I mean, yes, it's a false dichotomy, but it's something that is really separate and you can't stay in old black and white ways of thinking and work through this. And it doesn't work because the old way of thinking is and what we kind of were raised on was that, again, this is a choice, this is against God, this is a sin, and we don't even look at it, talk about it. We don't support people. How do you exist in a gospel like that? This is maybe not the best thing, but sometimes we push people into the gray area. That maybe doesn't sound right, but once you get in the area between black and white, that is where you start seeing the possibilities for your family and you start seeing the gospel in such remarkably different ways than you did. I would say my journey into faith was junior high level at best until the 2015 policy on baptisms. And that was the first moment, and it didn't come on slowly. It was a moment where I thought, I don't know if I can exist in this gospel anymore. I don't know if I can keep my family here. My husband and I were talking in a corner and quietly, and the kids were a little worried because they saw how worried we were. And we said, look, this policy came out. We don't understand it. We're going to study it and figure it out. But I remember saying to my husband, I don't know if I can make it. I don't know if I can stay. I had a gay brother. He had a gay aunt with a family who would be affected by this or who would have been. And I said to him, what does our family look like without the gospel? Or what does our life look like? And Ken said, what does our children's life look like? And with that, I got just this smack upside the head. And the spirit said to me, you better figure this out. And it really put me on a trajectory of, like, digging in that was super helpful. And this kind of goes back to the parents. It's so fascinating how the spirit guides parents before they need it. So many people say to me, I started listening or, you know, following Lift and Love or questions from the closet or whatever. And then like a month later, my kid comes out, wow, there is divinity in this. God is working with our parents and our LGBTQ people just to keep them connected and help them understand that he's in it. Yeah. And I want to talk more about that gray area because I know that people's ears will perk up about that because we're trained to push out the weight, push away great and lukewarm, anything lukewarm and be very black and white. We have all of that. Yes. But I think that the other way to think about this that has been the most meaningful to me is that that's where the tension is. Wherever there is tension there is growth and that seems to be a lot of heaven. So call it whatever you want. I just think that the idea of having to wrestle like that is what grows your spirit and this is like the ultimate point of tension where you have to really develop this relationship with God and it's a lot easier to shirk that responsibility and not wrestle. Right. And so it seems like of course leaning into what you're calling this gray area, leaning into this very uncomfortable middle space that's going to be the thing that helps us grow no matter what we learn. Like just being in that tension causes the evolution. Absolutely. And I mean if we look in the scriptures every story is attention, right? Yes. I have to leave the garden. I have to be in the lone dreary world. How am I going to make this work? That was so easy. And it really is kind of what we're talking about. We can stay in the garden. Everything's easy in the garden. Everything's beautiful laid out. There's the wrong, there's the right. Everything is given to you. It's beautiful. But that's not the plan. The plan is that we were ushered into a world that has a lot of contraries. Why did Lehigh have to leave his home where everything was comfortable and he understood? Because he needed a place where he could have absorbed the gospel in a different way. And all the pressures I love reading the scriptures because we all want this perfect family yet there's not a perfect family in the Scriptures, not in any work of scripture point is there? I mean, even God's family, he's like, look, I'm showing you over here. All of our families are under these same tensions but we're like, oh no, but we want ours to be perfect. So the scriptures when you take your lens of oh my child left the gospel or I have a gay child or I have a trans child or when you take that lens to your scripture study it opens the world and it's like the scriptures were meant for you. Like you see these stories and you're like, wow, Lehigh's story was not unlike my own and the tensions that go push against me and I believe that when you have to dig in and you have to say God you need to let me know that you're there. Like he went from some like out in the universe huge being that. I prayed to but didn't really understand, to someone who just like, I talked to him all day, like, what's next and how do I deal with this and what would you want me to do? And he's right here. So he went from this thing in the sky to someone who's just walking with me. And that's the beauty of these really hard situations that none of us want to deal with, but they grow us, like you said. Yeah. Could we talk about the difference, if there is one, between loving and supporting? I think there's a line of reasoning. I'm trying to present this argument as accurately as I can that says there is a Covenant Path. We've been hearing a lot about that last two years. Right. And when a gay child decides that they're going to live in a gay relationship or they're going to get married, that they've sort of definitively, from a simplistic perspective, maybe left the Covenant Path. And I think it's not hard to find conference talks that say, hey, we know what happens when you leave the Covenant Path and we sort of can predetermine what eternity is going to look like based on choices here. I think that's where a lot of the fear comes from when people react poorly to children coming out or making choices other than those they would have hoped because they're afraid that unlike your mom, that there really will be empty chairs at the table. And so when somebody's coming from that perspective, which again, to be quite transparent, obviously is not my perspective, but is one that is fairly easily found in even modern church teachings, how do you deal with that? I think that's a big kind of narrative right now, the Covenant Path. And I always have to ask myself, like, of course we're traveling along the Covenant Path. And for right now, our understanding is our LGBTQ people do not get to take part in part of the path, which is really hard as a parent to think about. And not only that, but when you look at your 13 year old, how do you tell a 13 year old, I have a mom who's got twin boys. How does she tell one of them they can go on this path, but the other they can't? That that path is not available to you? So again, at least as we do in our training and with our moms and in my own life, that is something that you take to the Lord. What is the path for this child? And more importantly, really, as a parent and as we know, we don't want our kids to always follow us. We want them to think and talk to God themselves. What's the path for me? I have this roadblock in these covenants and how do I PROCEED? Lord, tell me what to do here, because I'm supposed to go down this path, which my body is not going to let me do, particularly for gay kids, what do I do? So I think the only answer in the covenant path idea, I think we need to realize that even again in scripture, there was not one. Nobody followed the same path. Everybody came to their light and understanding and they're really their connection to God through different paths and they didn't all look the same. So let's talk about this idea that there is no prohibition for any part of the covenant path for someone who is gay. I think that there is this sense that we want to differentiate being gay and having a gay lifestyle. And it's only the lifestyle that would prohibit you from any particular part of the covenant path. So what would you say to someone who says, no, this is available to everyone in the same way that it's available to a heterosexual single person who would like to be married someday? I think that the first thing that comes to mind is that gay people actually can't marry. We say that that's a sin. So they're not allowed to marry and they're not allowed to be sealed to another in the temple. So right there that is prohibited. Now they were choosing a mixed orientation marriage. The church is explicitly not encouraging anymore. And that's a really interesting thing because as much as we're talking about kids, the same openness that's allowing kids to come out at young ages are allowing adults to come out of to be open in their marriages. And that will be another thing that we as church members are going to have to support people in is there are way more mixed orientation marriages than you would possibly understand. And you can look around your reward and bet that there's one or two in every word. A lot of people will say, oh, well, it's just like a single sister. So I have a 57, 58, she'll kill me if I go to bed. 58 year old, 59 year old sister. She seems so young. She's never married. I've watched a single sister her whole life. Her experiences are very different than some of the LGBTQ friends that have had to walk that path. We're constantly lining her up, getting her excited about our next date, getting her back online. We want her to be happy that way. We don't provide that for LGBTQ people. So when we say, oh, it's just like a single sister or whatever, we are absolutely just going right over their pain because it's uncomfortable. When we actually look at how does a mom of 13 year old twin boys tell one child they can date? Here we're going to have this chastity lesson and we want you to date, but you have to be careful and all of these exciting things. And then look at the other child and say none of this, you can't have any of this. And then they say, well, what am I going to do while he's dating. Well, you can hang out with us as you look forward in people's lives when we're having kids and marrying someone who that's really off limits for. So when we try and kind of make it easy on ourselves by saying, oh, it's just like this, we really are not mourning with someone who is really having to mourn. I would say the single most important thing in all of our adult lives. Yeah, that's such a good point. It's easier on ourselves to say, oh, they could have it, because otherwise it hurts. It really hurts to imagine what they're actually experiencing. Yeah. And you can't be flippant with somebody who, when you're really limiting, the only way to react is to listen and love and be there and be their support and be there saturday night date. And that's what we should be doing. That is where we should be. Especially if we don't think they should get married. Then what are you going to do to help them get through life? Finally go because you're home with your family? Are they invited to Sunday dinner, or do you take them on dates with other friends with you? I think we do a lot of things in culture and in our church to keep the pain away, and it makes us not look at what we're actually asking people. Yeah. If it's okay, I'm going to try to articulate another position that I think people might have, a question that people might have. And it's sort of like when we talk about the necessity, and it is a necessity of loving and supporting LGBTQ brothers and sisters, I think there's an implication, too, that we need to validate what they're feeling. Yeah. A concern that I've heard articulated is that there may be such a thing as over validation. And this doesn't just apply to LGBTQ situations, obviously, but if you're so radical in your validation of anyone's current feelings or circumstances, that you might be inadvertently causing harm by taking away tension by taking away and as we talked about earlier, can lead to opportunities for further growth and development. Do you have thoughts about this possibility of over validating? I do. Are we at risk of overvalidating a mom going through divorce with seven kids? Are we at risk of what would be the risk there? She has a lot to learn in this hard experience. We should just let her learn it herself. How about a brother in our ward who has cancer? Are we, like, getting in there too much and helping too much and overvalidating what he's going through? We use these phrases because we're uncomfortable. Our directive from the Lord is to love and support everybody. Love, be there, mourn. I mean, that's our baptismal covenant is to mourn, and our greatest commandment is to love. And there are no exceptions. What an individual does with the reality of being gay in their lives is between them and the Lord, and maybe a bishop if they're still in the church, because the bishop's there to help them through that kind of stuff. But that was never our job. Yes. That makes it so simple. I think that's a really good way to put it. You don't even have to decide if it's right or wrong. You literally can set that aside for God and be completely loving. Like you said, our only directive is actually to mourn and comfort and bear burdens. And that's crystal clear. Like, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. I love it. We take our LGBTQ people and we put their lives in a glass box and we all say, this is wrong. This is wrong. I mean, look at the families in our wards. The abuse, the way a husband shames a wife or doesn't let her have any money or doesn't consult with her when he wants to make family decisions, or when a wife is unkind to her children. There's so many things that we all are working on and trying to get better at and trying to be more Christ like in our actions. Why is this one thing in a glass box that we all point to and feel like we can? I don't know. Yeah. Trying to respond again as a person that would put that argument. Initially, you could take the incident of the woman caught in adultery and say, well, Jesus showed love to her, but then he said, Go that way and send no more, and shouldn't we do that, too? But I think there is actually a really important distinction in the fact that we're not Jesus. No. It is absolutely beyond our capacity to judge in any way and to determine if another person's lifestyle is, quote unquote, sin. A good part of the story, right. Where he gets on her level and where he draws on the ground in this kind of like, I write the laws, not you. Yeah. And he's saying and then he makes sure that she say first, he makes sure that she's protected, that everybody that could hurt her is gone by their own incrimination. We forget that that story is about incrimination of those that are incriminating her. It's him saying, do you get to do that? But we skip right to the end when everybody's away, and he says to her, Go and send them more. We skip to that part, but we missed the whole moral of the story, which is, don't throw stones at people. You have no idea what this woman's going through. Yeah, I want to talk about just the technicalities of a temple recommend, because I think this is something that people have a lot of fear around, that you can only be so affirming before you're going to start having consequences in the temple recommend interview. So can you address that a little bit? Yeah, well, this doesn't even just apply to temple recommends. We did a yeah, that's a good point. Like someone is all in, like really are all in and they don't want to break rules and they're feeling this tug on their heart. So can you be all in and affirming of LGBTQ people? Yeah, well, so this is a really interesting point. We did a really unofficial Instagram survey of people and we had like 4000 people respond to it. And we asked a question, what keeps you from standing up? Because clearly if people are coming to lift and love, they're interested, right? And they have some sort of skin in the game or they want to learn more. So we asked them what keeps you from speaking up about LGBTQ people? Like, by far the biggest thing was fear. Fear of being Ostracized in award for speaking up, fear of a bishop releasing them from callings because they didn't think they'd be worthy. I mean, I think 9% thought they'd be excommunicated. Oh my gosh, we're supporting we have a real fear around it and it keeps people it keeps parents from openly supporting their children. As far as the temple recommend question and that's always been there. So around actually the 2015 policy elder Christopherson said on multiple news it's published on multiple news outlets that we can support, we can put it on our Facebook, we can put that we support gay marriage. So this was the topic was gay marriage and not LGBTQ people as a whole. We can support, we can march in parades, we can put it on Facebook, we can all of the things, we can go to marriages, we can do all that. It becomes a problem when we speak against the leaders of the church or the doctrine and we try and get other people to follow us. So that's where the problem stands. I have long needed the temple in my church callings and now I'm an ordinance worker and I talk about I support gay people quite a lot. And I have needed the initial tories to strengthen me and to help me see right from wrong, especially in this space, because there is a ton of misinformation and there is a ton there's just ways to get all mixed up in this and I need that. And some of my best understanding of my family and our eternal trajectory have been in the endowment. So I would say, and I say that because a lot of LGBTQ families parents struggle with the temple. And Richard Osler said to a group of our women once, that the temple, we know what happens there. It never changes. It's not a talk that sort of blindside you in Sunday school or whatever or a conversation by a friend. We know what's there and we can go there and we can be at peace and we can listen for the Lord to help us guide us on this covenant path that is very different than everybody else's. Yeah. Thank you. I love that. I'm glad you brought up that Chris Officer interview. I think that's the first time I've ever heard someone really explicitly address because the temporary recommend question about supporting do you support or promote any teachings, practices, or doctrine contrary to those of the Church of Jesus Christ Latterday Saints? And so there's definitely, I think, a way you can read that and worry that you really are out of alignment in a way that you need to say, yes, I do support and we have a problem here. But, yeah, other Chris Everson says he mentions I mean, they talk about marching in parades and posting on Facebook and supporting gay friendly organizations like Affirmation. And the interviewer specifically asked, are you in danger of losing your temple privileges? And he said that, we have a variety of opinions and beliefs and positions in the church. And his quote was, in our view, it doesn't really become a problem unless someone is out attacking the church and its leaders, if that's a deliberate and persistent effort and trying to get others to follow them, trying to draw others away, trying to pull people, if you will, out of the church or away from his teachings and doctrines. So I feel like I read that and felt like you can breathe a little bit. There's a lot of flexibility here still to attacking the church is a pretty serious and pulling people away, like, deliberate and persistent pulling people out of the church. That is the line for that question. Yeah, it is. So a lot of times, parents will say, oh, my bishop said I can't we're supporting this child, or I affirm this child's path. He won't give me a recommend. Then we have to push them to that information, say, look, go read this, study that, and then go back to your bishop, because bishops aren't trying to be cruel. They're not trying to keep people out of the temple. They just don't have the knowledge yet. And we don't have a very good unfortunately, we don't have a very good system of information for bishops and leaders right now where they can kind of get through this information. Yeah, well, thank you so much, Alison. Maybe as we get to a close, I know Lift and Love's Mission is all about supporting LGBTQ fans. Could you just share what are a few characteristics of healthy LGBTQ families and what are some simple steps? Like, I'm thinking about the listener who is maybe in a situation where a child has newly come out or this has become a part of their reality for whatever reason. What do those healthy families look like and what are some simple steps people can take to achieve that health? Okay, so this is a great question, and it's relatively easy if you know that God sent you this child and that this is your way of understanding the world. Now it becomes so much easier that one thing that this child is God given that this is an important lesson for the family to learn from, be really careful if you think your kid might be gay. Be very careful about the things you say. Don't say, oh, there's always a gay person on a TV show. They always have to have somebody in a relationship. When you start saying things like that, you make a space that won't fit. Our children are hearing the most negative things about our gospel, and especially towards gay people and trans people and nonbinary people. Be open to conversations. Let's not be silent anymore. That's where the problem is coming. And the kids are gone. These kids show up for church and they hear some things that are hard, and if they can't talk about it, they'll leave. And that's one of the really important things is with this massive ship that I talked about earlier, our families, our kids come to church and they don't feel loved. They feel like they are the sinner and they don't want to show up anymore. So then the parent has to say, well, I've got to leave this 14 year old at home, but we're going to church. But they don't want to come because it hurts. That's a conundrum for the parents. And then the parents end up saying, how can I go? Then they're not there. And this hurts me. So connect to God as quickly as you can, because you're going to need that to kind of sail over some of the nonsense that you hear. And if you don't have that connection, it's almost impossible. And if you don't have the Lord, like, cooling down your heart after a really hard day at church, then it's going to be a hard path. And we need these families. There are so many of them. And if they are all leaving to protect their children, we're poor for it in our society. We're missing a lot. So protection. Come to live and love. There's good moms there that can help you. There's a lot of great information there. Yeah, we agree. Thank you so much, Allison. You're so welcome. Okay, that's it for today's episode, and we really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Alison Dayton. And of course, we want to give a huge thanks to Allison for coming on. And as always, if Faith Matters content is resonating with you and you get a chance, we'd love for you to leave a review on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you listen on. It definitely helps get the word out about Faith Matters, and we really appreciate the support. Thanks again for listening, and as always, you can check out more at Faith matters.org.