CAROL LYNN PEARSON

Carol Lynn Pearson has always known she was here on assignment.

“I was born a very smart girl in a very extreme patriarchal situation,” she says, looking back on her life with a mix of clarity, reverence, and that fiery illumination that for so long has characterized her work. “If we did indeed have some sort of plan before we come to this earth, I may have said, ‘I want to go down there and do something really interesting, dramatic, big’.”

And big it has been.

At 85 years old, Carol Lynn Pearson laughs that she is “still functional”--still walking daily, still writing, still being asked to speak for organizations like Gather and Encircle. And she is still deeply committed to her lifelong assignment—as a poet, playwright, and truth-teller inside a church she both loves and prods toward compassion.

Born in Salt Lake City to two devout Mormon, as those in the faith were widely called for so many years (it’s still her preferred term), Carol Lynn was raised with the belief that the LDS Church was God’s true plan for the human family. “The air that I breathed was certainly Mormon air,” she recalls. “And I loved it.”

Even as a child performing as Raggedy Andy in a Primary musical, she saw the path ahead clearly. “As I looked around, I thought, ‘How come everything important seems to be done by the men’?” She figured, “I’m as good as any of these boys.” Yet she observed how all the people on the stand were men, the voices on the radio were male voices, the Bible stories all seemed to be stories about men. She quips, “I very quickly became an unconsciously devoted feminist.”

Her brilliance was evident from an early age. As a student at Brigham Young High School in Provo, Carol Lynn won speech competitions, represented Utah in a national contest in Washington D.C., and had her photo taken with President Eisenhower. Later at BYU, she majored in theater and won Best Actress twice, once for playing Job’s wife and once for portraying Joan of Arc. “I must have absorbed a lot of cellular energy from playing Joan,” she reflects. “Because I was able to look around at my own church and say, ‘This is not right’.”

After college, Carol Lynn taught at Snow College to save money and then traveled the world for a year—finding herself in Russia the day JFK was assassinated. When she returned to Utah, she worked as a screenwriter for BYU's Motion Picture Studio, including the beloved short film, Cipher in the Snow.

It was as a student at BYU that Carol Lynn met “a charming young man” named Gerald Pearson. He called her "Blossom" and insisted the world needed her poems. After marrying in the Salt Lake City temple, together they borrowed $2,000 to self-publish Beginnings, a small book of her poetry, packed with spiritual gems. It took off. BYU Bookstore and other Provo shops couldn’t keep it on the shelves. 20,000 copies sold, which was unheard of for a book with this kind of origin story. Her former English professor, Bruce B. Clark, was thrilled with the poems and wanted to reference the book in the Relief Society manual he was responsible for producing for the Church. Carol Lynn was on the map.

She went on to publish Daughters of Light, a groundbreaking book on early Mormon women and their expression of spiritual gifts. Her research and poetic insight earned her speaking invitations from general authorities and their wives at various events. Her reputation grew. Her next book, Flight of the Nest, about the early LDS women’s stronghold in politics, firmed her household name across Utah and beyond. “I became well known to the brethren in Salt Lake,” she recounts. “They were impressed by and fond of me.” (She also later penned the well-known stage play, My Turn on Earth, Primary children’s song, “I’ll Walk with You,” as well as numerous other books.)

Carol Lynn and Gerald had four children. But behind the scenes, their marriage carried a silent ache. Before they married, Gerald had told his wife he had had homosexual experiences in the past but that it was not who he was. He had repented, and “all would be well.” Years later, after their third child was born, he confessed that it wasn’t. Despite trying to make the marriage work, and experiencing what Carol Lynn calls a “good physical relationship together,” there was significant heartache because Gerald had acted on his attractions during their marriage.

They decided to move to California for a fresh start. Gerald, an artist and visionary, had gotten them into some financial troubles with his interest in developing Mormon art and investing in some products that didn’t sell. Having spent some time in Walnut Creek and loving it, Gerald convinced Carol Lynn that was a good location to begin again. They moved together, but ultimately, they determined the best thing was to end the marriage and choose to part as friends.

From that time on, Carol Lynn supported the family through her writing.

Four years after the move, Gerald contracted AIDS.

Carol Lynn brought him into the family home to care for him until he passed away.

“It never occurred to me that I’d write about it,” she says. “It was such a shameful thing at the time.” But something stirred. She had come to believe, “We have this whole thing wrong. I don’t know why people are gay, but I know they are children of God. We must figure out a better way to treat these people than we’ve done in the past.” As Carol Lynn witnessed families rejecting their gay children and churches offering no refuge, she knew: this story had to be told.

That story became Goodbye, I Love You, published by Random House in 1986. It was a national sensation, and Carol Lynn appeared as a guest on both the Oprah show and Good Morning America. The book was crafted to appeal to a mass audience, and she says, “Most active Mormon people also knew about this book.” Carol Lynn went on a 12-city tour and had to have a second phone line installed to handle the calls and outreach which came pouring in. She feels lucky her kids didn’t experience any nasty fallout from the book’s publication.

The book marked a watershed moment in how the LDS community began to view its LGBTQ+ members. Historians who’ve examined the plight of the LGBTQ+ community in the LDS faith have been very clear that the publishing of Goodbye, I Love You was the turning point for individuals and families, and ultimately for the church, in seeing their gay brothers and sisters in a different light. Carol Lynn became a voice not only for her late husband but for thousands of others.

Gerald, she believes, understood the divine timing, and in his own way likely influenced it from beyond. Carol Lynn recalls how once, “He told me, ‘Listen Blossom, I know before we came to this earth you and I agreed to do a project together. I’m so sorry this has been so painful for you, but we agreed’.”

Carol Lynn posits that without Gerald, there would be no Beginnings. And without him, no Goodbye, I Love You.

She has since continued the work. Her second LGBTQ+-centered book, No More Goodbyes, chronicled the hundreds of incoming letters she received, sharing stories with permission from families who had embraced their gay children, and those who hadn’t. “There were still too many suicides, too many alienations,” she says. “I had to do something more.”

And so she wrote the stage play Facing East, a haunting portrayal of a Mormon couple grieving their gay son’s suicide. In the play, the son’s lover unexpectedly appears at the gravesite, offering a chance for truth, grief, and reconciliation. Produced by Jerry Rapier’s Stage Two Theatre Company and premiering in 2006, the play became a staple in LGBTQ+ Mormon discourse. The title references the LDS belief that caskets should face east for Christ’s resurrection, but that somehow “our gay people are still not invited into the light.”

The idea sprang when Carol Lynn attended a playwriting workshop in San Francisco and the participants were told to quickly jot down an idea for a play they knew they were ready to write. She was on fire. “It was electric from the beginning,” Carol Lynn recalls. “I knew it would be important.” She secured funding from Bruce Bastian, who she describes as a “marvelous man with large financial abilities to make big things happen in the gay scene.” She wrote the script in three months. A 20th anniversary revival is planned for 2026.

Carol Lynn is grateful to have seen how these three works, as well as her book, The Hero’s Journey of the Gay and Lesbian Mormon (available on Kindle), have been pivotal in the LGBTQ+-LDS space. In fact, all of the works across the six decades of Carol Lynn Pearson’s career have been mind-shifting and at times, feather ruffling. Her haunting recount of various tales from those affected by polygamy, Ghosts of Eternal Polygamy, also changed the nature of how that topic has been perceived by so many. Her much-anticipated, upcoming four-volume memoir, The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson: Mormon Author, Feminist, and Activist, is being published by Signature Books, with the first volume expected in August. “I’ve kept a diary since high school,” she says. “Everything is in it. Everything. Even though I lived it all, it’s still fascinating to read.”

Though Carol Lynn has been cautious about travel in recent years, she remains an anchor in both church and community life. Her local bishops and stake presidents have consistently supported her, even as she’s pushed boundaries. She has often looped both them and their wives in on her new projects before they come out, as was the case with Ghosts—a project they all enthusiastically supported and saw the need for. She recalls how, “One stake president told me, ‘When Salt Lake calls asking if we should be doing something about Sister Pearson, I tell them: leave her alone. Carol Lynn Pearson does better PR for this church than you could ever buy’.”

Carol Lynn laments that other trailblazers who have said and done much less out loud than she has have not always been treated with the same respect. She’s unsure why, but surmises this may have something to do with her geography. She also says her work has always been rooted in love, faith, and hope. “I’ve never caused trouble in a church setting,” she says. “My work is not hateful. It shines light on what has been and directs it toward the future of what ought to be.”

Today, she still stands to speak in Sunday meetings. “Part of my assignment is to encourage women to use their voices,” she says. “I try to model that. I stand up. I speak loudly.” She is deeply aware of how slow change comes. “Sometimes glacial,” she says. “But these teeny, teeny steps are just not sufficient. There should be prophetic confidence in just moving forward on something we know is important and correct—not just based on how it will affect our “public relations.” The leadership will never say, “We were wrong, and we apologize.” But we should acknowledge that we can and will do better.

Still, she believes the heart of the church lives not in headquarters and policy, but in wards and stakes, where people love and support one another. “Too often our church presents itself as a patriarchal, hierarchical corporation. But the church itself is down here, where people live and love and learn.”

Looking back on her life’s mission—the poems, the books, the plays, the pain, the joy—Carol Lynn offers no regrets.

“If I had not been chosen by fate, God, circumstance—whatever you want to call it—to be involved in this,” she says, “a lot of people would have lost out on something that changed their lives.”

She still believes in the term Mormon. She still believes in using her voice. And she still believes that God’s reach extends far beyond Salt Lake City.

“We all have our assignment,” she says. “I have a big one. And it just doesn’t seem to end.”

Note: You can purchase autographed copies of Carol Lynn’s books on her website: www.carollynnpearson.com/store

Please join Lift+Love at the 2025 Gather Conference June 27-28th in Provo, Utah, where Carol Lynn Pearson will be presenting on the main stage and he Gather Conference will be honoring Carol Lynn Pearson’s remarkable life.

AUBREY CHAVES

Aubrey Chaves has mastered the art of asking questions. As the co-host, alongside her husband Tim, of the popular Faith Matters podcast, Aubrey is known for her curious spirit and ability to ask complex, thoughtful questions of her guests, who range from scholars and theologians to therapists and philosophers. The conversations she helps lead are not surface-level; they probe deeply into the experience of faith expansion, and often, faith crisis.

Her instinct for asking good questions stems from her own period of deep questioning. Around 2011, Aubrey’s husband read Rough Stone Rolling by prominent LDS scholar Richard Bushman, and it shook their world. Aubrey had picked up the book to better understand her husband’s wrestle as he sought answers as to how best to defend the church, but instead found herself devastated by its contents. She says, "It forced me to face questions I’d ignored so long because I thought if a question disturbed me, it must be from an outside source or not true."

What initially disturbed her most was church history, but over time she became even more troubled by the present-day implications—particularly the harm she saw in the church’s position on LGBTQ+ issues. History, she realized, was static, but current doctrine and policy were not. "I felt disturbed by some of what I read that I couldn’t explain—some things that were not doing active harm, but the position on LGBTQ was doing active harm."

Aubrey had long believed that the truthfulness of the church meant it was always aligned with God's will. But once that certainty began to crack, the weight of being complicit in harm became unbearable. She felt a sense of urgency to decide whether to leave or stay. She entered what she calls a "season of consumption"—a six-year period of reading, learning, and trying to resolve the dissonance. Eventually, she became more comfortable with uncertainty. She realized there might never be a single answer that could make everything feel tidy again.

With that realization, she began to redefine the church’s place in her life. Rather than seeing it as a source of all gifts and truth, she started to view her relationship to it as one where she could offer her own gifts and energy. Discovering the Faith Matters community and being asked to take over the podcast along with Tim emerged from this shift—a space to pour her energy into thoughtful conversation. She recalls, “It came about organically because we felt so desperate for connection, to find people asking similar questions and burdened by similar pain.”

Aubrey sees ongoing tension around LGBTQ+ issues as a large part of the necessary struggle. Though she wishes the church were doing more, she believes in the power of creating bridges through honest dialogue. One conversation that stayed with her was with LDS scholar Terryl Givens, who told her, "Sometimes we make an idol of our own integrity." That sentiment helped her understand why she continues to stay and engage, even when doing so is painful.

There have been many moments when it would have been easier to walk away. But she believes there’s value in remaining at the table, asking questions, building trust, and staying in difficult conversations. "I've stayed in the church to stay in the conversation—even if I'm in an excruciating conversation or at a table where we're not all aligned."

Aubrey has often felt conflicted about that choice. There were times when integrity seemed to demand something more finite—like leaving altogether. But she believes that defining integrity in such narrow terms might not capture the full picture. “Maybe we don’t always have to do all or nothing,” she reflected. “People feel a call and energy moving them to where they’ll be able to do the most good for their soul or community. For me, I felt it was okay to stay and be very uncomfortable—a calling to put my gifts and energy here.”

It took years, she said, to feel peace in that lack of alignment. But over time, she found that her discomfort became a source of transformation. “I use my gifts to push toward real change— trusting that transformation within my own circle of influence can create meaningful ripples.” 

She describes the Faith Matters experience as one of healing and exchange. “It feels like healing flowing—we’re recipients as much as we put out,” she said. In the most honest conversations, even between people who completely disagree, she has seen something almost mystical happen. “There’s a magic moment where people are being vulnerable, honest, coming to the table in good faith, to connect. The technicalities of where you fall on one issue aren’t quite so loud because of this connection. The energy is so much softer.”

This shift, she said, feels worlds away from the “angsty arguments” that once left her feeling defensive. Instead, there’s a more grounded compassion, a willingness to understand.

In recent years, as Utah legislation has taken sharp turns that many have found painful, Aubrey has also felt the weight of needing to respond. “It never feels like enough to say our hearts are hurting, too, in Utah,” she said. “But whenever church things come up, I hope people feeling the most vulnerable and raw know that those of us who feel more safe are using our privilege. I hope it’s some comfort.” She sees her role as someone who can use her voice to open doors. “I’m hoping to be a resource—to get into a room for someone with a harder path. I hope they feel a sense of solidarity. I’m here, with linked arms.”

A large part of Aubrey and Tim’s allyship journey began while they were living in Boston. They developed a close friendship with a married gay couple—neighbors and classmates of Tim’s in business school. These friends, without ever explicitly trying to teach or convince, helped Aubrey and Tim see that their lives were fundamentally the same. Through genuine friendship, any lingering resistance Aubrey had simply dissolved.

"It was the universe’s gift to us," she said. "While asking big questions, we had this steady handful of friends. It was a totally unspoken way of breaking down any remaining barriers. They evaporated because we loved these people so much."

By the time they returned to Utah, Aubrey felt deeply committed to helping the church become more aligned with the inclusive spirit of Jesus. That experience solidified her sense of purpose. It also helped Aubrey and Tim learn how to be a safe space for others, especially for LGBTQ+ loved ones who later came out. They want to always be the kind of people who radiate unconditional acceptance.

In their Midway, Utah home, Aubrey and Tim are raising four children, ages 16 to 7. From the beginning, they’ve tried to make LGBTQ+ inclusion feel joyful. Each year, they go all out decorating for Pride month, turning it into a family celebration with rainbow-themed treats and signs.

Over time, their children have come to see LGBTQ+ identity as something to celebrate. Their youngest child doesn’t even recognize there might be tension around the topic. For her, learning someone is LGBTQ+ is simply fun and good news.

As their kids have grown, Aubrey has seen how these early efforts shaped them. They’ve formed meaningful friendships with LGBTQ+ peers, who often recognize their home as a safe space just by seeing a rainbow decoration or a photo from a Pride event.

One of the most powerful moments of visceral change in recent years came during last year’s Faith Matters Restore gathering, where Allison Dayton and John Gustav-Wrathall led a session together. Aubrey remembered watching the energy in the room shift as John shared his story. The audience, many unfamiliar with John or his journey in and out and back into the church while being married to his longtime partner, leaned in with openness and empathy.

John’s decades-long effort to seek fulfillment while holding on to what was important to him resonated deeply. Even attendees from more conservative backgrounds responded with compassion. Aubrey said it felt like "4,000 people leaning in together."

Faith Matters surveyed its audience, and LGBTQ+ inclusion ranked among their top concerns, alongside women’s issues. Most of their listeners are still active in their wards, navigating tension as they show up with love and faith. Aubrey hopes those who are struggling know they’re definitely not alone. 

Reflecting on how to handle difficult conversations, Aubrey draws inspiration from Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind. She’s learned that trying to persuade through logic is rarely effective. Instead, she finds that storytelling and connecting at that heart level are always more productive for good. 

By sharing what is honest and painful instead of confronting or creating tempting arguments, she has seen conversations shift and “connection across the table that does so much of the heavy listening.” It’s then that Aubrey knows, “Seeds are planted in those moments—and that is the most fertile ground for good fruit.”

Aubrey Chaves will be presenting at this year’s Gather Conference. To register, go to: www.gather-conference.com

DR LISA TENSMEYER HANSEN

Chapters. That’s how Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen describes the various seasons that have directed her to what she now regards as the pinnacle of her life’s work. All along, she has felt the guidance of an all-knowing hand. 

The PhD and LMFT now resides in the heart of Utah Valley with her husband Bill, where she is co-founder and CEO of Flourish Therapy, which provides life-saving therapy for LGBTQ+ individuals. While none of her seven biological children, her foster daughter, or other “bonus children” identify as LGBTQ+, they joke that “maybe someone will come out for mom for Christmas.” Besides having a gay nephew whom she adores--and who is soon graduating in vocal performance from the U where he started a gospel choir. Lisa agrees it’s interesting how her path has brought her to this particular space. But she can’t look back without recognizing she’s always had an awareness and empathy for those often deemed marginalized.

Growing up in the LDS church, Lisa says, “I spent a lot of time thinking about what God as parent would want their children to grow up and be and do.” As she experienced various stages of faith development, she started by believing in a God who had reasons for the rules, even those that seemed to make less sense. She began to recognize a God who valued development and not just blind obedience--a God who saw something in each of us that needs to be deeply valued and seen and understood.

As a teen, Lisa believed somewhat in the idea of “the elect”—that finding a way to be like God was a narrow path and not everyone was destined for eternal greatness. But as she became a parent, she recognized that every single individual’s growth matters. That everyone has been given something to bring them closer to God and something to believe in. This paradigm was further cemented when her youngest children’s involvement in a theater program enlisted her to serve as the program’s director. A former member of the BYU Women’s Chorus, Lisa also ran her stake youth choir and served in the stake Young Women’s presidency. In these capacities, she recognized how some of the most vibrant and lively performers were those brave enough to later come out as gay. 

In their small community of Payson, it was easy for Lisa to see how the community of church and school did not provide a safe haven for these performers to be powerful leaders and contributors, despite their phenomenal skills and talents. She witnessed some be excommunicated because they identified a certain way. Another was refused participation in a temple opening extravaganza even after being selected for the top spot, because they were gay. She saw many who were relegated to second class citizen status if they chose celibacy, but “never fully celebrated as they would be if straight.” Lisa says, “That was a powerful message to me… These were not people who were anxious to leave God behind; these were amazingly spiritually deep people whose communities decided they had no place for them.”

In another chapter of Lisa’s development years, she witnessed racism firsthand. Growing up in Indiana, there were both schools and swimming pools segregated based on the color of one’s skin. When Lisa enrolled in an integrated college preparatory high school in her neighborhood, her understanding of what it means to live in a democracy with people who are treated as less than shifted as she heard various viewpoints and recognized her own privilege. At the time, largely due to the teachings she was immersed in via gospel discussions in her home and what was taught over the pulpit, she complacently believed that “God had reasons for the way things were,” even racism. Never hearing anything else, besides the incredulous objections of her more broad-minded classmates, Lisa assumed things would just be that way forever. As she matured in the gospel, and especially after reading Edward Kimball’s carefully crafted summary of the events leading up to his grandfather’s reversal of the priesthood ban in 1978, Lisa experienced a substantial eye-opening. She came to realize that it wasn’t the people waiting around for God to change His mind or make His ways known, but that the people themselves needed to change. She asked herself, “Are we content to keep others at arms’ length so we feel we are holy enough?” As this dissonance set in and Lisa pondered her participation in what she had always believed was the restored gospel, she had an awakening to the reality that even though Jewish leaders at the meridian of time when Christ was on the earth kept many from full participation, that God continued to work in that space. That this delineation didn’t obliterate Christ’s teachings about scripture, prayer, the law and prophets. Lisa says, “This seemed like a path I could emulate.” Perhaps there was something to be gained, or something to be done, in this space of nuance.

As she watched so many in the LGBTQ+ space be excommunicated from a church she as a straight woman could still belong to, Lisa decided to do what she could to elevate the LGBTQ+ community “in the eyes of people like me, and in their own right.” She decided to start a gay men’s chorus in Utah Valley, patterned after the one she’d seen in Salt Lake. “So many I knew cherished the Primary songs and wanted a sense of connection to God that was being denied to them,” she recalls, in reference to LDS markers like missions and temple marriages. It took awhile, but Lisa was able to put together a small gay men’s choir that rehearsed and performed at UVU, the state hospital, and various library holiday celebrations. Once Lisa went back to school, one member of the Utah County Men’s Choir started the One Voice choir in Salt Lake City, and most of the performers followed him to that organization.

With this goal achieved, after some prayer, Lisa felt what she should do next was go back to school with a focus on studying mental health. She knew this is where she could be of most use to the LGBTQ+ community within the context of LDS life, and ultimately chose her alma mater of BYU as the only place to which she’d apply, after a former colleague agreed to mentor her. “At 50 years old, I felt lucky someone wanted to work with me,” she says. The timing was ideal, as BYU was facing accreditation challenges in 2010 and needed to enhance their LGBTQ+ research—a role Lisa eagerly took on. As she put in her hours toward earning her LMFT and PhD, her first client in the BYU clinic was someone with gender identity questions. Soon after, Lisa received an influx of clients who identified as gay, lesbian, gender queer, nonbinary, SSA and bisexual. She says, “I felt like this was confirming a particular direction for my focus.” 

Lisa was instrumental in starting a research group at the clinic based on Kendall Wilcox’s Circles of Empathy wherein gay people would come and share their experiences with straight student therapists. Through the four sessions in which it ran, therapists-in-training participated at least once to expand their understanding. She was also able to help a professor build his curriculum on the topic and has been asked back to the MFT program more than once to talk about LGBTQ+ clients. Of her time in BYU’s graduate program, Lisa says, “I felt a lot of support for the things I wanted to do to benefit and support the LGBTQ+ community while at BYU.”

Just as she was graduating with her PhD, Lisa was approached by Kendall and Roni Jo Draper about helping start the Encircle program in Provo, launching her into a new chapter. She recruited two clinicians she knew to help advise a program in which they could offer free therapy. Along with Encircle director Stephenie Larsen, Lisa was there for the opening of the first home in Provo, where Flourish Counseling Services was born (as a separate entity). While “it was the right thing at the right time,” as Lisa oversaw 13 therapists to meet the clients’ needs, ultimately Lisa parted ways with Encircle. However, she still refers young people to the program for their friendship circles, music and art classes, therapy, and as a place where “they can be themselves without their queerness being the most important thing about them.” 

After moving off campus from Encircle with those 13 therapists, Flourish Therapy is now its own entity with 80 therapists offering approximately 2500 sessions a month in offices from Orem to Salt Lake, all on a sliding scale based on what clients can afford. Thanks to generous donors and insurance subsidies, Flourish is able to keep their session costs well below national average and even offers free therapy to those in crisis who cannot afford it otherwise. Lisa says, “We deeply depend on people paying it forward.” Because of the large number of therapists available, clients are often able to select a therapist with a similar gender identity or orientation, if they prefer.

Unlike LDS Social Services, Flourish is able to freely adhere to APA guidelines and honor their clients’ authentic selves, however they may show up. They have clients ranging from those trying to stay in the LDS church with temple recommends (whether in mixed orientation or same-sex marriages), to those trying to withdraw their names from the church or seek letters for transitional surgeries. Flourish also often treats missionaries referred by mission presidents when the assigned field psychologist perhaps might be struggling to understand. Lisa’s efforts have been widely recognized, and she considers it “a real honor” that the Human Rights Campaign gave her its Impact Award a few months ago. The Utah Marriage and Family Therapy Association also recently awarded Lisa Supervisor of the Year for her work in mentoring student and associate counselors and Affirmation International awarded her Ally of the Year for her work in steering Flourish through its first five years and maintaining its mission to support the LGBTQ+ community despite outside pressures to change their structure and process.

When the tough questions resurface and dissonance reappears, Lisa finds herself traveling back to the early answers she received in Chapter 1 living—when she first knelt and prayed around age 10 to ask whether Joseph Smith had really seen the Father and the Son. She says, “I felt an enormous feeling of light and love. I received no specific answer to my prayer, but felt a love wherein I recognized that something here is the answer and secret and why of everything. God feels this way about us here on earth–that’s what has sustained me all this time and made me feel that what’s inside of us is valuable to God. God’s not looking at us to shed what we have that’s divine but to lean into it and live and cherish and value the learning experience. We will then become able to recognize everyone’s lives—identity and all--as stepping stones.” Lisa concludes, “The things that are true about me are what have moved me into this space where I hope I’m lifting others to that same place wherein they can see how their Creator recognizes the value—the holiness—within all.”  

ELDER STEVEN E. SNOW

“He’s a Democrat and an environmentalist. How did he end up an LDS general authority?” teased the headline of a September 30, 2024 Salt Lake Tribune feature story about Elder Steven E. Snow, an emeritus Seventy and former historian for the LDS church. The header left out an additional, unique identifier for a General Authority, but one that Elder Snow also considers important: ally. After dedicating much of his life to a church service wherein he was assigned to study and present some of the thornier topics that have been known to make or break testimonies, Elder Snow says, “There are a lot of personal stories of grief and heartache we could eliminate if we could find a way to be more inclusive.”

The grandfather to two granddaughters and a granddaughter-in-law who identify as LGBTQ+, Elder Snow says he has always been hopeful that “the church would be more receptive to those who experience same gender attraction and provide opportunities for full engagement so they can one day make all the covenants in the temple.” While he’s always been a devout believer who “loves the church,” Elder Snow sees and appreciates the parallels in its history leading up to the June 6, 1978 priesthood ban reversal and the efforts now being made by many members to treat LGBTQ+ people more inclusively. He remembers exactly where he was, who he was with, and what he was wearing when it was announced the policy many deemed racist was reversed, saying it was as landmark a day for him as JFK’s assassination and America putting a man on the moon. Elder Snow recalls, “Even though I hadn’t been exposed to discrimination personally growing up in St. George, Utah, the priesthood ban really troubled me.” 

Much like last August’s new guidelines for transgender individuals in the church, the November 2015 policy preventing the children of same sex couples from getting baptized also deeply troubled Elder Snow, as did President Nelson’s doubling down on it in a speech at BYU Hawaii two weeks later. At the time, Elder Snow was friends with a gentleman who had married in the temple and had kids before later coming out as gay and divorcing his wife. The policy directly affected the man’s family, and at the time Elder Snow promised him it would be corrected, while internally feeling surprised he’d said something so bold that he had no real control over. When the policy was reversed in 2019, Elder Snow rejoiced and was pleased when that friend called him up and said, “You were right!” He’s hoping one day his hopeful words will prove fortuitous again, if and when the church someday allows full temple privileges to all faithful members, including those in the LGBTQ+ community, like his granddaughters.

At a family reunion in Newport Beach, CA a few years back, Elder Snow’s granddaughter Katie approached him and asked if she could share some news with everyone. She detailed a familiar story for many in this forum—that she had struggled through childhood feeling “different,” which led to significant mental health challenges, and that she was ready to share with the family she was gay. Elder Snow appreciates how all at that gathering received the news well, assuring Katie they loved her and that they supported her. Katie graduated in anthropology and now works at a museum in Oregon. Elder Snow says, “She’s such a great soul, everyone loves her – and her sister, Vanessa. I’m partial, I know, but they’re great.” Elder Snow’s oldest granddaughter chose Instagram as the forum to share that she was queer, and later that she was marrying her nonbinary partner, Grey. Elder Snow and his wife attended Vanessa’s and Grey’s wedding in Logan, and admits, “For a former General Authority of 18 years and Mission President, it was a little different and surprising in some aspects, but we were happy to be there and support them. We just love them.” Vanessa received her doctorate from Utah State and now works as an audiologist in the Northwest.

Elder Snow understands why, after so many devout years of trying to make it work, Katie and Vanessa both felt the need to leave the church. He says, “My hope and prayer for the future is we can be more inclusive and find a way to somehow maneuver through this difficult issue and yet keep people together and love them and make them feel they can take part in all the blessings the gospel of Jesus Christ offers everyone.”

Elder Snow and his beloved wife Phyllis (who passed away last year from COVID-related issues) raised their four boys in St. George. Elder Snow very much misses Phyllis, and now tries to focus his time with his many grandchildren, one of whom helps care for him after he suffered a disastrous fall down a flight of stairs a few months ago. “Getting ice cream downstairs at 4am sounded like a good idea, but…” he now chuckles. When he is in optimal health, Elder Snow enjoys golfing with friends and restoring classic cars. A retired attorney and self-proclaimed “news junkie,” Elder Snow has had to turn it all off lately as the nation’s political leadership has proven disappointing to him. 

While serving in the church office buildings, Elder Snow was certainly a political minority among his mostly Republican colleagues, some of whom would tease they could convert him. But he says that as a whole, they collectively tried to keep the focus on being an international church, and made efforts to invite both Harry and Landra Reid as well as Mitt and Ann Romney in for conversations about the national and global landscape. 

As the LDS church’s historian from 2012 to 2019, Elder Snow’s keynote projects included continuing to oversee the publication of the Joseph Smith Papers as well as supervising the launch of the Saints four book series which chronicles some of the tougher topics in church history. He was also tasked with overseeing the release of the gospel topic essays. Having full access to all of the church vaults, it remained important to the researchers and scholars assigned to this project to bring more transparency to the church history department. The discovery process included many meetings with the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve to determine which 13 topics would be addressed more openly by the CES so that seminary and institute teachers might provide more forthright answers to questions that many members had ultimately left the church over in the past. Elder Snow says they found the project ultimately helped many millennials establish more trust in a living church, although there proved quite a population of older members who were unaware and who have found particular aspects of church history jarring. Elder Snow remains optimistic that “This will one day be a church for everyone,” but also that, “It’s going to take some bold leadership, and it might take awhile.” 

As for his own relationship with the LDS faith, Elder Snow says, “I love going to church and being in a ward and worshipping with my friends and neighbors. I’m grateful for the good the church does as an organization around the world. I love being a part of it. There are so many good things; those types of blessings should be available to everyone.” He continues, “I also understand the concerns and difficulties, and that it’s not a perfect church. None of us are perfect. We are led by people with challenges and difficulties just like everyone else in the world. But it’s the best place to be I know of. That’s why I feel badly that not everyone can enjoy the same blessings.”

Ever mindful of establishing safe spaces for LGBTQ+ loved ones in the church, Elder Snow surmises, “We’ve done this before with race; we can do it again. Will it be soon? Probably not in my lifetime – it might take a while. But my hope is we can find a way for it to happen.”

JULIE SPILSBURY

Mesa, AZ councilmember Julie Spilsbury recently endured a hostile city meeting in which she was ripped apart for supporting a necessary utility rate increase of an average of $5 a month. While some surrounding communities experienced a much more significant 30% rate increase, many in her city (including several from her church community) still took her to task, yelling and taunting until the mayor had to demand they stop. Julie came home, had a good cry, and woke up the next morning at 5:45am to regroup with a solid distraction—a live news spot at a Turkey Tuesday food distribution. It’s an event that provides turkeys to 2,000 families in need at the holidays and something Julie loves participating in every year for the United Food Bank. “I needed it that morning, to believe in humanity. In this job, I see the best and the worst of humanity.”

While last month’s council meeting was difficult for Julie, her most brutal public revolt took place in January of 2021, the first month of her tenure. After Julie, who identifies as a super-ally, was elected the prior August, the mayor forewarned Julie he’d be putting forth  a non-discrimination ordinance. The bill would bar discrimination for the LGBTQ+ community with housing, employment and public accommodations—meaning trans individuals could use the bathroom of their choice. It was a bill that angered the far right, and even the far left was upset, claiming its “religious protections” language still allowed “plenty of opportunities to discriminate.” Julie says that was an essential inclusion to achieve concession, and that, “When you know the far right and the far left are mad, you’re in a pretty good place of compromise.” 

While LDS church headquarters sent a letter of support for these AZ bills via the Area Seventy showing their support for the bill, the outcry against it among the LDS population was still significant and loud. From a city with a population of 520,000, Julie received over 900 angry emails—a far uptick from the 60 or so emails normally generated by a controversial issue. The letters quoted the Family Proclamation, scriptures, and included many accusations that various people—including Julie—would be “going to hell.” Again, Julie marveled at this result over something the LDS church specifically showed support for, much as they have more recently for the US Respect for Marriage Act. Three members of the council had already joined the mayor in supporting the bill, achieving a majority, so technically Julie’s vote wouldn’t sway things one way or another, but all eyes were on her—the religious conservative mother, new to the council. She says she has never regretted voting to support the bill, and was told her action made the most difference to the LGBTQ+ community. 

Julie is a paradox to many in her community. She says her large family is ”as Mormon as it gets,” with her husband having served as bishop and five of her kids having served missions. While she comes from a traditional, conservative background, in 2019, she says God started working on her family in regards to the LGBTQ+ experience, leading Julie, her husband Jeremy, and their kids to “listen to all the podcasts, read all the books, and open up to all things LGBTQ+.” During this time, Julie says, “My heart was broken open, giving me a greater capacity to love. Having my heart exposed to the LGBTQ+ community, I have not been the same person since, in all the best ways.” She just didn’t realize how this transformation, which ultimately softened her to all marginalized groups, would result in so much negativity from her church and city community. She says, “I love having people like me, and to have all these people think I’m evil is hard. I have a huge heart and I promise I really am nice. I’m the one who brings cinnamon rolls to city meetings!”

Julie says she grew up a “choir geek” with many LGBTQ+ friends. In hindsight, she claims she still believed many of the myths about gay people back then—but her tutelage, especially courtesy of Richard Ostler’s podcast and books, showed her she perhaps held some misconceptions. She says, “The LGBTQ space is so complicated, hard, and painful, and I also think it’s where Jesus is. That’s why I choose to be in this space—where I feel the most love and the most authentic to who I want to be as a person. There are few things I feel this compelled to be a part of.”

The Spilsbury brood included Lydia—18, Lauryn—21, Brigham—23 (who is married to Tess), Cambryn—24, Miranda—26 (married to Jacob, and an adopted daughter who’s lived with the Spilsburys since age 11), Maybree—26, and their “bonus daughter,” Michelle— (married to Abe). Several of the Spilsbury kids have also chosen advocacy fields, with Lauryn, who just returned from a mission to Spokane and who speaks Swahili, now working with African refugees. Cambryn is getting a Masters in Social Work in Chicago and Maybree is completing her Masters Degree in Conflict Transformation in Virginia. Julie’s husband Jeremy is a long-time arborist and recently sold their  tree company and went back to school himself to study Peace and Conflict, and now wants to create a Peace and Conflict curriculum  for high schoolers.

The Spilsburys are grateful their allyship is a shared family value, with Julie saying, “It’s been fun to have all my kids be like-minded together in this space. We’re definitely not perfect, but we do have massive love. And we do struggle with things—when General Conference is hard, I love how we can talk about it. Some of my kids struggle with the church, and yet the gospel is part of our cellular structure—not just a Sunday thing. I’m grateful we can talk about all the itchy things and keep open communication.” Julie says that more than anything, she’d prefer her kids be “deep human beings who care deeply about others with true intent than to be people who go to the temple every week but don’t do that.” 

After hearing so many stories of struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community, Julie is now very intentional about her allyship. Of local friends like Michael Soto, Julie says, “They have changed my heart and soul. I have many trans friends, and it all started with this experience.” She joins an ally group on the first Sunday of every month, and has helped support a friend assemble a choir of queer participants who have left the LDS church, but who miss singing the hymns. She says, “I tend to say yes to anything I can in this space.” 

Julie wears a rainbow pin to church, and has a rainbow as her screensaver on her phone, saying, “I want my Young Women I work with to know I’m a safe space. Unless you say something, people don’t know. And it’s hard to assume anyone’s safe these days—too many times, these kids get burned and can’t trust anyone.” When her husband, Jeremy, was serving as bishop and they made it clear where they stood, many youth who had left the church because they identify as LGBTQ+ started coming over and coming out. Back in 2021, as they started receiving backlash, Jeremy said to Julie, “Oh my gosh, can you imagine what we’re feeling, and we don’t even have a gay child or are gay ourselves?” A former young woman Julie had worked with who later served a mission came out to Julie and Jeremy and opened up about her struggle deciding whether she should marry her best friend (a female who was living in another country) or stay in Arizona and continue working in the temple as she loved the church. Julie says, “I just got to be there and sit with her through it. I’ve said so many times, if for no other reason did I go through this experience  so that I could be there for that one person, it would be worth it. It was incredible to get to mourn with her, cry with her, and feel all the feelings.”

While the past month has been rough as Julie has joined the many struggling with very real emotions stemming from recent election results, especially amid “the bubble” where she lives and attends church, Julie is more motivated than ever to pursue and lead with goodness. She trusts, “Jesus will win in the end.” She joins a group of 20-30 Mesa-based women ready to activate and change individual lives in their community. She says, “We’re looking for ways to serve. I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, but it’s hard to feel it’s all going to be fine. But I don’t want everything to implode, because I care about our country.”

As she moves forward, serving in her various communities, Julie cleaves to a favorite quote from Sam Norton’s book, Come as You Are: “Love that doesn’t try to change you is what changes you.” Julie concurs, “If treating people with love and respect is what makes me evil, so be it. I’m not going to change. I feel all of this very deeply.”

DAN McCLELLAN

For all those who’ve used The Word as a weapon against the LGBTQ+ community, it’s time to holster your Bibles and go on social media. There, you’re likely to encounter the reel-explanations of Dr. Dan McClellan, aka @maklelan, where over a million followers on Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter tune in to find out what the Bible actually says, from an actual Bible scholar. Dan explains there is a difference between a theologian, whose work is to teach how a religious group should incorporate or interpret Biblical teachings, versus a critical Biblical scholar, whose job is to evaluate and explain the historical and social context of the actual written work at the time it was written. Dan says studying it this way removes the common proclivity to consider the Bible as univocal—meaning the text speaks as one universal voice and thus can’t disagree with itself, as all parts should harmonize with the others. This deeper study brings to light the need to consider data over dogma, which is exactly what Dan now does with his online break-it-downs and popular podcast, Data over Dogma.

The problem with dogma, according to Dan, is that it can be painful for certain populations like the LGBTQ+ community when exclusive ideologies are favored by the power structures that find them beneficial. This social identity politicking underlies so many of the philosophies and interpretations Dan started to see floating across the social media landscape around 2020, when he decided to put his degrees to work online to join the conversation. When it comes to the scholastic frames hanging on his wall, there are four of them—including a bachelor’s from BYU in ancient Near Eastern studies, a masters in Jewish studies from the University of Oxford, a master of arts in biblical studies from Trinity Western University, and a doctorate from the University of Exeter, where Dan defended his thesis on the cognitive science of religion and the conceptualization of deity and divine agency in the Hebrew Bible in 2020.  Along the way, he’s become well-versed in 12 languages. When people like to challenge whether he is really a “scholar,” he laughs, and insists that dealing with so much negativity is actually job security.

Biblical scholarship was not a job Dan envisioned until he began his Biblical Hebrew studies at BYU and thought, “If I could make a living out of studying the scriptures, that would be the coolest thing in the world.” He was not the typical BYU student. Raised in West Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, and Texas, he was not brought up particularly religious, and in his late teens, made several friends in the LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities while waiting tables. Dan joined the LDS church at age 20, and quickly realized he brought along a different world view than many of those raised with “the primary answers.” For instance, he understood evolution to be true, that the earth is not a mere 6,000 years old. He was always fortunate enough to find himself around other likeminded members of the church, even if they were in the minority.

He served a mission a year after joining the church and there says he found himself “compelled to be a representative of a more conservative perspective. At the time, I was willing to toe the line, but it never sat well with me.” Afterwards, he observed that conservative-mindset population multiply at BYU, where most of his peers had a very black-and-white, binary view of the world. He hoped to find more nuance, more compassion and charity for those who got the proverbial short end of the stick. And then he met the Soulforce Equality Riders, who in the vein of the Civil Rights’ Movement Freedom Riders of the 60s, were a group of young people who went on a seven-week bus tour to protest discrimination against LGBTQ+ students on college campuses. This was something Dan could get behind. Knowing people who had family members and friends who’d taken their lives because of oppression from church and the broader conservative community due to their orientation and gender identity, Dan got in touch with Soulforce and asked them to come speak at a gathering at his apartment complex which included several student wards. He felt this was work that mattered. 

Dan met his wife at BYU and as they began to raise their three daughters, he further contemplated what kind of world he was bringing his children into. When his oldest daughter approached him at age seven and asked, “What sports are girls allowed to play?” Dan acknowledged that was a question he’d never had to ask as a boy. “But the fact that had occurred to her already, and she had accepted it, brought me to tears. I knew I needed to do more to try to change the world for the generation we’re raising. I couldn’t be on the sidelines.”

This was 2016, around the time where Dan was deeply troubled at the seemingly mass acceptance from his Utah-based community of a political candidate who proudly boasted about sexual assault. The fact that this wasn’t a deal breaker for voters, and the peripheral surge of homophobia in the political space, ignited something in Dan, who then says he “chose to put my privilege on the line and speak up for those who didn’t have accessible privilege.” He became the Democratic party’s precinct chair for Herriman, UT from 2016-2020, was the Salt Lake County Chair of the LDS Democrat Caucus from 2018-2020, and ran for the Utah House of Representatives in 2018 and the Utah Senate in 2020. He didn’t win either race but impressively minimized the blue-red margins. Along the way, he clearly let people around him know he would be speaking out against the hostile actions he was witnessing to let people in minority communities know he was safe, saying, “If my work makes some feel uncomfortable, then good.”

As the pandemic of 2020 continued to incite and divide the country, Dan decided to peek into the Tik Tok space to see what people were sharing. He was surprised at the amount of religious chatter; this was a conversation he had a right to and interest in joining. “I saw a robust community talking Bible and religion from all sides—from very conservative Christian and Jewish creators to those styled as deconstructionists and those overcoming religious trauma. But I didn’t see a lot of credentialed experts. I thought I might be able to position myself not to join anyone’s team, but to call balls and strikes when I see them. To my great surprise, there was a lot of interest.”

When it comes to data vs. dogma, Dan says, “If there’s a dogma I stick with consistently, it’s that all other things being equal, we should give the benefit to the less powerful group. It’s interesting, the fact that doing this infuriates so many people who explain why it’s ok for them to hate… When people challenge my bias recognizing how power structures govern so much of the world around us, and why so many experience the world so differently from someone like me, that’s why I work at the intersections, trying to amplify women, immigrants, LGBTQ, and root out Islamophobia and Antisemitism.”

Dan has worn a Pride-themed watchband for years that his wife bought for him because “he likes colorful stuff.” (A talented sketch artist, he’s also an avid comic book character fan.) He tells those who ask that he wears his watchband as a signal that he’s hopefully a safe space and is going to stand up for people who are often disenfranchised. Interestingly, over the ten years he recently worked for the LDS church as a scripture translation supervisor, he’s worn it in meetings with members of the Quorum of the Twelve when he was often brought in as a Bible expert. “I never got one word about my watch… It's interesting the people who run the church haven’t rejected my expertise, when people on Twitter have so much objection.”

The evangelist community gives Dan the most heat online, and he feels is the largest foe right now to the LGBTQ+ community as many are “inserting their dogmas into the political sphere.” He's always been impressed (though not surprised) by the amount of atheists, agnostics, “none’s” and deconstructionists who follow and laud his work, but occasionally an atypical fan presents themselves, as was the case when someone recently recognized Dan in a grocery store and confessed not only was he in the extremist group DezNat, but he’s also a Dan fan. “I didn’t see that one coming,” laughs Dan.

Having traveled all over the world for his career and seeing the church operate everywhere, Dan is often asked his views on a variety of Bible topics. He has a project in the works via St. Martin’s Press entitled, The Bible Says So—a book that includes the greatest hits of Dan’s social media, with each chapter taking on a different claim of what the Bible says about abortion, Jesus as God, homosexuality, the mark of the beast, etc. As Dan’s online presence has grown, it has become his number one focus and income source, though he still occasionally teaches online courses, and currently has an honorary fellowship with the University of Birmingham Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion.

As to what the Bible says about homosexuality, Dan says, “It’s a reflection of where their societies stood at the time and what they understood about sexuality. And it’s different between the Old Testament and the New Testament, based on the ideas of social hierarchies or domination.” He explains that the ancient concepts of gender and sex don’t line up with our concepts today if you allow them to operate on their own terms. “Early Judaism talks about six or seven gender identities, some that could line up with trans and nonbinary. Early Christianity was more conservative and still doesn’t line up perfectly. Everything in the Bible represents a certain framework and set of conventions that are much different from today. Pretending what people said 2,000 years ago ought to be authoritative today gets tricky when it comes to their unflinching endorsement of buying, selling and owning other human beings—it puts the lie to anyone who claims to fully subordinate all their interests to the biblical texts.” 

Dan continues, saying, “You have to ask, what are your priorities and agendas with the interpretive lenses you bring to the text?” In regard to structuring power, he says you’ll come up with a certain set of conclusions if you prioritize that over loving God and loving your neighbor. “The Bible is a story about the transition from an insular small group to the whole world. For Christians who read it to understand everyone to be if not a child of God at least their neighbor, they should see it’s about maximizing the success of the whole group, not our domination over a certain group. If people read the Bible and find a God who loves all, that should be the priority. But human nature often retreats to prioritizing the protection of one’s standing and access to power.” But Dan argues that the Bible teaches us to fight against human nature to put what God wants above what we want. “If your Bible is telling you to do the opposite, you should reevaluate your faith.” 

Concluding that many Biblical teachings are “outdated, harmful, and have long been irrelevant,” Dan says, “But people have turned their opposition to homosexuality into an identity marker for the social identities important to them. They leverage what the Bible says to authorize and legitimize that identity marker to structure their power and values in favor of their identity politics.” A point Dan reiterates “so often that people are probably sick of it” is that “everyone negotiates with the Bible, so much so that what it actually says is no longer relevant in terms of social monitoring. Polygamy, slavery from the start of the book until its end, the objectification of women—we’ve jettisoned it all as it no longer serves our social identities. I think the Bible-induced homophobia will ultimately go away just like slavery. It’s just a question of how long it will take for people to prioritize children’s safety.”

Dan pointed out that evangelical scholar Richard Hayes (who wrote a book in the 90s that took a hardline stance against homosexuality) will soon come out with a new book in which he claims he was wrong and now argues from a theological point of view for full inclusion of LGBTQ+. Dan recognizes that his first book did a lot of harm for which Hays has not yet had to face accountability, but anticipates more and more people will come around in the future. Dan closes out his own book with the fact that again, “Everything is negotiable. As more people realize they know people who are LGBTQ+ and choose to respect and love them, there will be no choice but to negotiate those prejudices out of our lives.”

Here are some of Dan McClellan’s videos that we especially recommend:

https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan/video/7375917733050977582

https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan/video/7369580573762850094

https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan/video/7290176434465770795

https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan/video/7351788398144720170

DR LISA TENSMEYER HANSEN

Chapters. That’s how Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen describes the various seasons that have directed her to what she now regards as the pinnacle of her life’s work. All along, she has felt the guidance of an all-knowing hand. 

The PhD and LMFT now resides in the heart of Utah Valley with her husband Bill, where she is co-founder and CEO of Flourish Therapy, which provides life-saving therapy for LGBTQ+ individuals. While none of her seven biological children, her foster daughter, or other “bonus children” identify as LGBTQ+, they joke that “maybe someone will come out for mom for Christmas.” Besides having a gay nephew whom she adores--and who is soon graduating in vocal performance from the U where he started a gospel choir. Lisa agrees it’s interesting how her path has brought her to this particular space. But she can’t look back without recognizing she’s always had an awareness and empathy for those often deemed marginalized.

Growing up in the LDS church, Lisa says, “I spent a lot of time thinking about what God as parent would want their children to grow up and be and do.” As she experienced various stages of faith development, she started by believing in a God who had reasons for the rules, even those that seemed to make less sense. She began to recognize a God who valued development and not just blind obedience--a God who saw something in each of us that needs to be deeply valued and seen and understood.

As a teen, Lisa believed somewhat in the idea of “the elect”—that finding a way to be like God was a narrow path and not everyone was destined for eternal greatness. But as she became a parent, she recognized that every single individual’s growth matters. That everyone has been given something to bring them closer to God and something to believe in. This paradigm was further cemented when her youngest children’s involvement in a theater program enlisted her to serve as the program’s director. A former member of the BYU Women’s Chorus, Lisa also ran her stake youth choir and served in the stake Young Women’s presidency. In these capacities, she recognized how some of the most vibrant and lively performers were those brave enough to later come out as gay. 

In their small community of Payson, it was easy for Lisa to see how the community of church and school did not provide a safe haven for these performers to be powerful leaders and contributors, despite their phenomenal skills and talents. She witnessed some be excommunicated because they identified a certain way. Another was refused participation in a temple opening extravaganza even after being selected for the top spot, because they were gay. She saw many who were relegated to second class citizen status if they chose celibacy, but “never fully celebrated as they would be if straight.” Lisa says, “That was a powerful message to me… These were not people who were anxious to leave God behind; these were amazingly spiritually deep people whose communities decided they had no place for them.”

In another chapter of Lisa’s development years, she witnessed racism firsthand. Growing up in Indiana, there were both schools and swimming pools segregated based on the color of one’s skin. When Lisa enrolled in an integrated college preparatory high school in her neighborhood, her understanding of what it means to live in a democracy with people who are treated as less than shifted as she heard various viewpoints and recognized her own privilege. At the time, largely due to the teachings she was immersed in via gospel discussions in her home and what was taught over the pulpit, she complacently believed that “God had reasons for the way things were,” even racism. Never hearing anything else, besides the incredulous objections of her more broad-minded classmates, Lisa assumed things would just be that way forever. As she matured in the gospel, and especially after reading Edward Kimball’s carefully crafted summary of the events leading up to his grandfather’s reversal of the priesthood ban in 1978, Lisa experienced a substantial eye-opening. She came to realize that it wasn’t the people waiting around for God to change His mind or make His ways known, but that the people themselves needed to change. She asked herself, “Are we content to keep others at arms’ length so we feel we are holy enough?” As this dissonance set in and Lisa pondered her participation in what she had always believed was the restored gospel, she had an awakening to the reality that even though Jewish leaders at the meridian of time when Christ was on the earth kept many from full participation, that God continued to work in that space. That this delineation didn’t obliterate Christ’s teachings about scripture, prayer, the law and prophets. Lisa says, “This seemed like a path I could emulate.” Perhaps there was something to be gained, or something to be done, in this space of nuance.

As she watched so many in the LGBTQ+ space be excommunicated from a church she as a straight woman could still belong to, Lisa decided to do what she could to elevate the LGBTQ+ community “in the eyes of people like me, and in their own right.” She decided to start a gay men’s chorus in Utah Valley, patterned after the one she’d seen in Salt Lake. “So many I knew cherished the Primary songs and wanted a sense of connection to God that was being denied to them,” she recalls, in reference to LDS markers like missions and temple marriages. It took awhile, but Lisa was able to put together a small gay men’s choir that rehearsed and performed at UVU, the state hospital, and various library holiday celebrations. Once Lisa went back to school, one member of the Utah County Men’s Choir started the One Voice choir in Salt Lake City, and most of the performers followed him to that organization.

With this goal achieved, after some prayer, Lisa felt what she should do next was go back to school with a focus on studying mental health. She knew this is where she could be of most use to the LGBTQ+ community within the context of LDS life, and ultimately chose her alma mater of BYU as the only place to which she’d apply, after a former colleague agreed to mentor her. “At 50 years old, I felt lucky someone wanted to work with me,” she says. The timing was ideal, as BYU was facing accreditation challenges in 2010 and needed to enhance their LGBTQ+ research—a role Lisa eagerly took on. As she put in her hours toward earning her LMFT and PhD, her first client in the BYU clinic was someone with gender identity questions. Soon after, Lisa received an influx of clients who identified as gay, lesbian, gender queer, nonbinary, SSA and bisexual. She says, “I felt like this was confirming a particular direction for my focus.” 

Lisa was instrumental in starting a research group at the clinic based on Kendall Wilcox’s Circles of Empathy wherein gay people would come and share their experiences with straight student therapists. Through the four sessions in which it ran, therapists-in-training participated at least once to expand their understanding. She was also able to help a professor build his curriculum on the topic and has been asked back to the MFT program more than once to talk about LGBTQ+ clients. Of her time in BYU’s graduate program, Lisa says, “I felt a lot of support for the things I wanted to do to benefit and support the LGBTQ+ community while at BYU.”

Just as she was graduating with her PhD, Lisa was approached by Kendall and Roni Jo Draper about helping start the Encircle program in Provo, launching her into a new chapter. She recruited two clinicians she knew to help advise a program in which they could offer free therapy. Along with Encircle director Stephenie Larsen, Lisa was there for the opening of the first home in Provo, where Flourish Counseling Services was born (as a separate entity). While “it was the right thing at the right time,” as Lisa oversaw 13 therapists to meet the clients’ needs, ultimately Lisa parted ways with Encircle. However, she still refers young people to the program for their friendship circles, music and art classes, therapy, and as a place where “they can be themselves without their queerness being the most important thing about them.” 

After moving off campus from Encircle with those 13 therapists, Flourish Therapy is now its own entity with 80 therapists offering approximately 2500 sessions a month in offices from Orem to Salt Lake, all on a sliding scale based on what clients can afford. Thanks to generous donors and insurance subsidies, Flourish is able to keep their session costs well below national average and even offers free therapy to those in crisis who cannot afford it otherwise. Lisa says, “We deeply depend on people paying it forward.” Because of the large number of therapists available, clients are often able to select a therapist with a similar gender identity or orientation, if they prefer.

Unlike LDS Social Services, Flourish is able to freely adhere to APA guidelines and honor their clients’ authentic selves, however they may show up. They have clients ranging from those trying to stay in the LDS church with temple recommends (whether in mixed orientation or same-sex marriages), to those trying to withdraw their names from the church or seek letters for transitional surgeries. Flourish also often treats missionaries referred by mission presidents when the assigned field psychologist perhaps might be struggling to understand. Lisa’s efforts have been widely recognized, and she considers it “a real honor” that the Human Rights Campaign gave her its Impact Award a few months ago. The Utah Marriage and Family Therapy Association also recently awarded Lisa Supervisor of the Year for her work in mentoring student and associate counselors and Affirmation International awarded her Ally of the Year for her work in steering Flourish through its first five years and maintaining its mission to support the LGBTQ+ community despite outside pressures to change their structure and process.

When the tough questions resurface and dissonance reappears, Lisa finds herself traveling back to the early answers she received in Chapter 1 living—when she first knelt and prayed around age 10 to ask whether Joseph Smith had really seen the Father and the Son. She says, “I felt an enormous feeling of light and love. I received no specific answer to my prayer, but felt a love wherein I recognized that something here is the answer and secret and why of everything. God feels this way about us here on earth–that’s what has sustained me all this time and made me feel that what’s inside of us is valuable to God. God’s not looking at us to shed what we have that’s divine but to lean into it and live and cherish and value the learning experience. We will then become able to recognize everyone’s lives—identity and all--as stepping stones.” Lisa concludes, “The things that are true about me are what have moved me into this space where I hope I’m lifting others to that same place wherein they can see how their Creator recognizes the value—the holiness—within all.”  

THE J KIRK RICHARDS STORY

On this day of Thanksgiving, just on the periphery of BYU Provo, a group of loved ones encircles a table. They sit near a brightly hued stained-glass window that provides a direct view of the historic LDS temple just a couple blocks away. But within these walls, this gathering at this table is embracing one of their own. A rainbow hangs over the child’s head. Rich amber, indigo, and cerulean hues permeate through their tablecloth. In this room, this child is “Encircled” by love. And this hypothetical child is safe here, on the walls of the Encircle home one of artist J. Kirk Richard’s first iconic, affirming paintings still calls home seven years later.

His work is a salve to so many in this space. It hearkens, it heals, it hangs on the walls of the real families who encircle. It is oft gifted to new families first embarking on their journey through prints and greeting cards. J. Kirk Richards’ breath-taking creations have also hung in museums and universities worldwide as well as at LDS church headquarters. His “Encircled” piece in Provo is especially appreciated by his nephew, who has spent much time at the house that Encircle founder Stephenie Larsen first envisioned being a home away from home for LGBTQ+ kids who needed it, complete with warm, fresh-baked cookies greeting those who gather for friendship circles and after school hangouts. Seeing his uncle’s painting has allowed Kirk’s nephew to feel safe in talking to him over the years. The Encircle team has since commissioned Kirk to paint several pieces that hang in the various homes, one of the several LGBTQ+ mental health-focused nonprofits to which he often donates his unique gifts. In his ever-broadening ally fanbase, Kirk says one of his favorite byproducts is encountering bishops and seminary teachers who share they’ve displayed his images in their offices and classrooms as a sign they’re safe.

Of his allyship, Kirk claims he’s not ten steps in, rather, “I’m just doing things from my corner of the world. I get sheepish about allyship – how people should or shouldn’t be an ally. Maybe I don’t meet a lot of people’s criteria, but one thing that helped me not worry so much was when Troy Williams from Equality Utah told me at a dinner, ‘Just do your thing, don’t worry about doing it perfectly. Of course, we want to learn as we go, but Rome is burning, and we need to work together and not fight each other.’ So that’s what I do.”

As the holiday season heightens, Kirk is currently completing his submissions to the annual creche exhibit in Palo Alto, CA, as well as several private commissions for holiday gifts. A 2000 graduate of BYU Provo, Kirk and his wife Amy (a CSW/therapist) have raised their four kids, Maegan—22, Bryan—20 (married to Aubree), Kate—17, and Jack—14 in Utah valley. They now call Woodland Hills, Utah home. Kirk’s always been a working artist, though admits in the beginning, they lived quite frugally. When he reflects on what or who got him started painting images for LGBTQ+ people, he mentions several former mission companions and childhood friends who later came out as gay. One in particular stands out as having been “extra compassionate, the kind of mission companion who agreed to let us go home on one particular day I was just feeling completely tapped out, rather than making me feel bad about it.” Several years later, once Facebook became a thing, Kirk reconnected with this former companion and saw he had since married a man and was living happily in Canada. Then he found others.

“Watching all these stories of people I loved, it became clear to me that pressuring people into a mixed orientation marriage was not something I thought we should be doing as a community. Of course, if people are choosing that and it appears to be working for them, I wouldn’t want to discourage that, but I didn’t want to pressure or encourage it, based on watching the lives of my friends and mission companions,” says the artist.

Fast forward to 2008; Kirk was serving in a Utah bishopric during Prop 8. Word came down through the channels that leadership needed to be prepared to start mobilizing ward members to call Californians to encourage them to vote against same-sex marriage. Kirk said this was a moment when he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on. He felt very uncomfortable at the idea of asking ward members to call California and ask them to vote on “this thing I potentially don’t agree with.” He tried to watch the church-provided videos online to find a good reason for the policy, but said he’d come away with a sick feeling. Kirk was relieved when his ward ultimately didn’t end up being asked to make the calls.  Shortly after, Kirk participated in a solo art show where all the paintings were of different shapes. He included one called “Jesus Said Love Everyone,” in which Jesus wore a multi-colored robe and embraced the small figures around him. “This was one of my first paintings that was explicit about not continuing to exclude and marginalize LGBTQ+ people.” 

When he steps into his studio to create a new rainbow-hued commission, Kirk often channels his formative years as one of eight kids growing up in a big LDS family around a dinner table in the tree streets of Provo where the early morning kickstart to the day was musical instrument practice and scripture study. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to really examine what in my faith practice and belief is from God and what isn’t. A lot of my artwork is meditating on that.” Kirk says he comes back again and again to “themes of healing and teaching and community and love and mercy and grace.” 

Recently, as part of his daily painting series with artist Melissa Tshikamba in which the two create smaller masterpieces that are auctioned via Instagram, Kirk titled one piece, “By their Fruits, ye shall know them.” He ruminates that Jesus offered so many ways to interpret what these fruits might be. “There are many ways people are using religion to control others… I’m 47-years-old and I may interpret things differently now than I did in my early years.” He strongly feels, “The teachings of Jesus transcend easy interpretations and are worth wrestling within the complexities of life. These are the things I think about while painting. If what I’m painting strikes a chord of emotional and personal significance, then the art feels true and become greater. If it’s imbued with emotion and meaning and truth, it’s a much stronger piece for me.”  

His mantra being the golden rule, “something Jesus taught and most major religions have in some form,” Kirk goes on to surmise, “We can’t really treat others like ourselves unless we can imagine being in their shoes. We have to try to empathize with their position and imagine what it would be like to be them. I don’t think we can ask people to forego a committed, passionate relationship with someone they’re attracted to in any ways we’re not willing to forgo ourselves. That’s kind of become the foundation of my thoughts about life and relationships.” 

THE JEFF ANDERSEN STORY

His face is a familiar one for many in the LDS-LGTBQ+ space. Several may even consider Jeff Andersen of @latter.day.stonecatchers their pseudo-Sunday school teacher—you know, the one who meets you in the parking lot (via Instagram) on days your actual Sunday School teacher has taken the discussion to a place where it feels necessary for you to walk out. (Why are there so many days when it feels necessary to walk out?) This is a question Jeff Andersen understands. While he currently has no personal “skin in the game” in the form of an LGBTQ+ immediate family member that he’s aware of, Jeff has made it his mission to catch the stones hurled and offer solidarity to so many who long to hear they’re loved, just as they are.

For several years, Jeff and his brother have competed in adventure racing. An outdoors enthusiast, Jeff loves any type of nature retreat; but adventure races bring an entirely different kind of competition to the forest. Over 4-24 hours, competitors canoe, bike, and run through a massive wilderness area containing several checkpoints. A compass and paper map (which they typically receive just an hour before the event) are their only guides. Jeff says, “You can go any direction you want, and sometimes we have to bushwhack through crazy stuff to find the checkpoints. But you just go and do the best you can while enjoying the beautiful but sometimes harsh wilderness you’re in.” 

It's a metaphor Jeff has relied on as he’s turned to personal revelation in lieu of handbooks over the past six years since he stepped into the open ally space. Born and raised in “Happy Valley” as a straight, white, cisgender male, Jeff did all the things: he served a mission, attended BYU where he got a master’s degree in accounting, married his wife Jessica in the temple, and they are now the parents of three children. But sometimes, Jeff hears things from the pews that similarly prick other families. Sometimes, Jeff ends up in the parking lot for car church himself, providing comfort, solace, and always Jesus’ teachings in his trademark rainbow-hued bowtie—a wardrobe choice he started about one year ago to present himself as a safe place to any who may need it. 

Jeff’s faith expansion first occurred when a job transfer to London opened his mind to other faith traditions as he fell in love with cathedrals and saw people connecting with God all over the world in different ways. He recalls, “Their faith was as beautiful and valid to them as mine was to me.” He hadn’t thought much up until that point about how church could be a struggle for some; but after returning to live in Utah again, a gentleman who Jeff had noticed was always showing up to serve the ward in any way possible, spoke up in Sunday School. Jeff felt a distinct impression: “He is gay. You need to invite him over for dinner.” Jeff and Jessica did just that and while their young children went out to play, the man broke down crying with gratitude at the Andersens’ kindness. He shared that since his difficult recent divorce to a woman, he had been having a difficult time. He loved the church and wanted to be a part of it, but it felt so impossible because others felt he shouldn’t be there. Jeff said this admission was a first for him and it “just felt sooo… wrong.” Jeff resolved he needed to do something about this—that if someone “wanted to be with us at church participating, they should be able to.” 

This launched Jeff’s quest to understand more about the LGBTQ+ experience. He read and listened to everything he could get his hands on. The pandemic of 2020 resulted in a welcome break from church for Jeff and family, as did their subsequent move to Virginia, during which they lived with his brother’s family, a situation that necessitated they continue home church longer than most. This sacred time of focusing their spiritual study on inclusive and loving lessons did not make the return to church seem too appealing, but then Jeff and his brother received a unique call to teach an early morning seminary class together. At first, Jeff was hesitant, but having learned of the recent statistic that nearly 20% of LDS youth and YSA identify as LGBTQ+, Jeff felt uniquely called to be a stone catcher among this young audience. He says, “I had an overwhelming feeling that in a seminary class of 20, 4-5 would be LGBTQ+ and needing to know God loved them… I felt really good about being there for them.” Throughout the school year, Jeff and his brother subtly displayed inclusive art pieces including Tara and Sage’s “God is Love” and J. Kirk Richard’s “Friends at Church” to make the visual point that all were loved and included in their class. While there was a family who pulled their child from the class, there were others who lamented the brothers’ departure year-end when Jeff’s job situation made the calling impossible. Jeff says one student came up to him and thanked him for displaying the pictures they did because it was the first time the student ever felt Jesus loving them as they were. Jeff says while that broke his heart to hear that, he felt so grateful the individual trusted him with that information.

While there were 20 kids in that class, Jeff left feeling like there are tens of thousands in his world who needed to hear messages of inclusion. “The thought that anyone might think God wouldn’t love them because of who they were was unbearable to me,” he says. This is when Jeff started his popular Instagram site and podcast, @latter.day.stonecatchers. He admits, “It’s grown a lot more than I ever anticipated.” While Jeff and wife have received pushback in the largely conservative wards in which they’ve lived—being told their expressions of Pride flags and rainbows are “too political” or hearing that they shouldn’t be considered for certain callings, they have taken the time to express to their kids why Jeff wears his bowtie every week: that while doing so puts a target on them, and possibly even the assumption he is gay, but hopefully makes LGBTQ+ people feel included and loved. Once, while driving to the temple with his kids, they considered the matter and asked if they, too, could buy a rainbow bow tie or earrings, willing to take risks in order to represent what they feel is a loving gesture.

One Sunday, there were some things being said in Jeff’s sacrament meeting that he didn’t agree with, and he walked out—wanting to find somewhere where he could feel God’s love. He retired to his truck with his scripture bag, and pulled out the words of Christ. He remembered someone on a podcast saying that in their car is where they often experienced their church on Sundays. Jeff says he felt a unique connection to all of these people throughout the world, sitting in church parking lots, trying to feel God’s love in a place that for many, made it hard to feel that. This is when Jeff’s alternate Sunday school messages began, and have since proven a respite for those seeking Jesus’ stone catching ways and words. Jeff recognizes how some genuinely feel the impression from above that it’s okay not to go to church, but for those like him who feel called to keep trying because the Lord “has things for (us) to do,” Jeff is dedicated to his ministry.

Jeff says he’s surprised at the massive variety of people he now hears from—most being LGBTQ+ individuals or family members. Many left the church five or more years ago, but are still seeking messages from the Spirit or want a relationship with God but don’t feel wanted at church. Jeff especially credits the moms of LGBTQ+ kiddos, saying, “I honestly believe LGBTQ+ moms are going to change the church. While it’s not happening as fast as it should, you ladies are amazing.” Jeff attempts to post messages that can be shared by more progressive members to their more by-the-book friends, but recognizes that some posts do push boundaries and he laments that some of his thoughts have resulted in a loss of followers. He greatly appreciates when he hears from people who are not quite in a supportive mindset yet–but are trying.

Jeff is often asked, “Why do you stay?” His response: “This is where I feel God wants me to be. I don’t think it’s the right place for everybody, but through personal experiences, I know this is where God wants me to be. If I did not know that, I would have left.”

Jeff says, “I think we need to be gatherers and not gatekeepers. We need to trust in the divine diversity that’s so evident in God’s creation, and have faith that each of us has been created with a unique purpose that no one else could ever fully understand. Rather than doubting others, we need to see their divinity within and know that God loves them just as they are.” Jeff struggles to see why, “for some reason we’re always trying to leave someone out. We need to knock that off. It’s evident in scriptures and our own church history. We need to trust and believe in God when they say everyone’s in. I don’t understand why we feel we need to prevent people from participating in sacred spaces, whether chapels or temples. God wants them there.”