On social media, Shane Carpenter radiates a bright smile, a generous heart, and buoyant enthusiasm. His posts are vulnerable, poetic, wide-reaching. One even went viral within 30 minutes as on March 23, 2019, on his IG @iamnotashaned, he was the first person he knew of to come out as gay online while actively serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was an impression he felt inspired to follow—to offer others hope.
Read MoreCAROL 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…
Read MoreMARGARET STEWARD
Margaret Steward didn’t grow up imagining she’d one day be the wife of a mission president, or the woman quietly fielding whispers after her husband came out as gay. She was born in Nephi, Utah, into what she calls “a super LDS community,” but her family stood slightly off-center from the mold. Her father was a 36-year-old small-town bachelor and partygoer when he met her mother, a 27-year-old schoolteacher. “They hooked up, got pregnant, and married. My mom didn’t want to be married,” Margaret recalls. “My sister always suspected my mom was a lesbian. Their whole marriage was a struggle.”
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