Introduction and Guest Background

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 874

Guest [00:00:00] We like to throw rocks at the people who don't see the world in the way we do.

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners. To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is February 26, 2018, and today we are very excited to have with us Chad Anderson. Chad, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Chad Anderson [00:01:13] Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:14] It's good to have you. And today we're here to talk about Chad's book. He just came out with it. I believe it's self published. Is that right, Chad?

Chad Anderson [00:01:23] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] The book is called Gay Mormon Dad. Chad is a licensed clinical social worker who practices here in Salt Lake City. And we felt like this interview would be timely for a number of reasons. A month or two ago, we interviewed Tom Kristofferson, which we were very honored and happy to do to talk about his book. Tom talked about his life and his faith and his brief mixed orientation marriage there, and his thoughts around being gay and Mormon. And so, you know, that's brought some of these issues into the forefront recently. Mormon Stories listeners will remember an interview I did with Josh and Lally Weed, who came kind of burst onto the scenes five or so years ago where Josh sort of said, hey, I'm gay, but I love Lolly and I'm sexually attracted to her. And we're in this great mixed orientation marriage. Well, some of you will know that Josh and Lale very courageously announced a week or two ago that they're getting divorced. Josh is coming out, not only coming out as gay, but has decided to live as a. As an authentic gay man, which means dating and having relationships with men. He and Lale are still strong, but, you know, this brings back into the forefront this issue that is going to continually confront LGBT Mormons and their friends and family. What about celibacy? What about mixed orientation marriages? What about staying in the church as a faithful Mormon? And so the reason why I thought it'd be really cool to interview Chad, not only does he have his own story, not only, not only does he have this important book and his own experiences trying to live as a faithful gay Mormon, getting married in a mixed orientation marriage as a faithful Mormon, but also having that not work out. He also is a licensed clinical social worker and can talk a lot with direct experience about the mental health implications of living, of making these sort of choices. And. And so that is what today's interview is gonna be about.

Chad Anderson [00:03:43] Fantastic.

John Dehlin [00:03:44] Yeah. So welcome. Welcome to Mormon Stories.

Chad Anderson [00:03:47] Thank you. Yeah, and thanks for that recap. There's a lot going on in the gay married world lately for Mormons, and I feel like all gay Mormon mixed orientation marriages are all cut from the same cloth a little bit. They all have a lot to do with each other, but every variation is completely different. Tom Kristofferson's story, Josh Weed's story and my story are all completely separate from each other. And I know thousands of gay Mormon moms and dads and transgender individuals who have their own versions of those stories, but often from the same interview or same origin place.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Yeah, absolutely. All right, we want to thank everyone who is joining us on Facebook Live. We like to do these interviews live streaming mainly because we think it's interesting to have the kind of, the real time, collaborative kind of feedback questions. So we want to welcome everyone who's joined us today. Right now we've got 41 people joining us. I imagine that's going to grow over a little bit. And so we just want to welcome everyone. Please send us your comments and questions on the Facebook feed. Please share this live interview on your walls if this is a topic that, that you're interested in or that you want other people to know and care about. I also just want to let everyone know there are different ways you can help make Mormon Stories Podcast successful. You can like our Facebook page at Mormon Stories Podcast, you can give us a positive review. We sometimes get mean spirited people who don't even listen to the podcast, bringing our average review scores down. So if you can give us a positive review on Facebook, that makes a big difference to us. If you can share a podcast review right now, like it and share it, that'll make a big difference. We also really appreciate those who are joining us through itunes. If you can give us a positive review on itunes, that goes a long way towards promoting what we do. And of course, we live and die by our support financial supporters. So those who are able, go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. $10, $20, $50, $100 a month, whatever you can afford. Keeps the 501C3 alive and allows us to continue providing this content. So, so we're ready to dive in. We want to thank again everyone for joining us. And Chad, if you don't mind, tell us just a little bit about what you do as a therapist and how you've, you know, what type of experience you've had with LGBT Mormons. That kind of adds an extra level of kind of experience to the story that we're about to go into.

Chad Anderson [00:06:30] Yeah, I was, I was a social worker and therapist for many years prior to my coming out of the closet in 2011. After I came out and then moved to Utah, I have done almost exclusively LGBT work. And people going through faith crisis or leaving Mormonism have kind of become areas of specialty for me since I've been here in Utah. But I had several years as a therapist and social worker prior to that here in Utah. It seems to be a lot of the same stories over and over again for LGBT Mormons, at least. Depression, anxiety, the coming out process and navigating shattered relationships and family lives, the loss of faith, often suicidal thoughts and or attempts followed by this kind of for those that survive and make it out, followed by this extremely long period of figuring out who they are now that they're no longer part of the community that they were once a part of. I do have many clients who have come out as gay and have stayed active as Mormons or even stayed in mixed orientation marriages, but the overwhelming majority of the people I've worked with have chosen to leave the faith. And then again, there's that long period of rebuilding your life afterward and navigating relationships, fathers and grandfathers and every relationship around you, professionally and personally, that then becomes defined by the decision to come out, ultimately hopefully resulting in a really happy, authentic life after all of those years of feeling broken. And that mirrors my own story in a lot of ways. On the flip side of that, in mixed orientation marriages, at least we have these. The straight spouse is what they often call them, the person who was married to the gay person. And they have a lot of different depression and anxiety issues to go through as a result. So navigating along any point of that path therapy can be really helpful along the way.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] Beautiful. All right, well, we're really excited. Again, this is a really well written book and I think it's going to help a lot of people. But what we're going to do today is not, you know, we're not going to assume that our listeners have read your book.

Chad Anderson [00:08:47] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:08:47] We're just going to do your story and there will be some overlap on what's in the book. But, you know, if we cover everything in the book, there's no need to read the book. And I think the book is worth reading. So I'm just going to start talking about your story, and we'll dive right in. Is that all right?

Chad Anderson [00:09:03] Absolutely.

Chad's Early Mormon Childhood and Faith

John Dehlin [00:09:04] All right. So, Chad, tell us about your early Mormon experience growing up in the church and when you first started kind of realizing that you were maybe different.

Chad Anderson [00:09:17] Yeah, I come from a very, very historically Mormon family. Ancestors, nearly all of them in the 1830s and 40s period were European immigrants who came over and joined the Saints and crossed the plains in handcarts. And a number of my ancestors from that era ended up settling farmland in Idaho where they raise their children. Who raised their children. Who raised their children. So my parents are both from southeastern Idaho, and that's where they were married and had the first five of their children. And then in the mid-1970s, they moved to southwestern Missouri, which is where my little sister and I were born. So we are the sixth and the seventh kids growing up. I had a very isolated Mormon experience in that I was in a community that historically and presently really dislikes Mormons, despite the Mormon origins of the area, with Adam Ondiamond and Nauvoo and everything else being very close to there. But there were very few Mormon kids in my school. We were part of a ward where people would drive an hour to get to church. So it was a very. I have a very Mormon family, but we were very isolated growing up. That said, I was always the true blue kid. I was the one who read the Book of Mormon. By the time he was six years old, I'd gone all the way through it already. I was the one who looked forward to church every Sunday and prayed constantly. And I tell a story in my book about being eight years old and coming home from church. And my hero was Abinadi from the Book of Mormon. And my brother and sisters were fighting, and I tell them, we have to keep the peace in the home. You're inviting the spirit of contention. I mean, so even as a very little kid, I was that Mormon kid. But I probably started realizing I was different as early as four or five. I didn't fit in socially with other boys. I mean, that's too young to have romantic crushes. But kids that age, including my own sons, talk about, I have a crush on this girl at school, we're dating, or that's pretty common for even kindergarten children. And if I had a crush, it was on boys in school. I didn't fit in with the other boys. I didn't do the sports thing. I was more creative. I wanted to play with the girls and draw pictures and stay inside. So it was a pretty early realization that I was different, that I didn't fit in, and that not only that, but I had to learn how to hide it because if I didn't hide it, I'd get teased. So starting very young in my development, it was the realization that not only am I different, but I have to pretend to not be different. And that became kind of the story that followed for the next 30 years of hiding in plain sight.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] How does a kid, as you're growing up into middle school and high school, what are the elements of your behavior that you notice might signal things you don't want to signal? And what was it like for you trying to mute or change or be aware of whatever those things might have been?

Chad Anderson [00:12:21] Yeah, yeah. Boys, adolescent boys are really cruel to each other. They tease each other constantly. And it's always when another boy doesn't fit in. It's almost always you throw like a girl or you're gay or you're a fag, or you're a sissy. There's that element of that. And when you're realizing that you are a fag or a sissy, that teaches you how to hide that even more abjectly in those social relationships. So pretending to have crushes on girls when you really have crushes on guys, not only that, but when you do have a crush on a guy for an 11 or a 12 year old kid, which is kind of when crushes start and hormones kick in, learning that there's something wrong with you. I would beat myself up constantly. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? To the point where as a young teen, I developed an anxiety condition whenever I noticed an attractive guy walk by, which is normal for anyone to admire someone else and have a crush, but it would develop into nausea or just self flogging. Dang it, why are you doing this? Feeling like I was unworthy of the priesthood, even though I wasn't doing anything wrong. So that became a constant part of my development. So it was very, very much based in depression and anxiety. Even at the ages of 9, 10, 11, but particularly into adolescence, I didn't fit in socially. I had different interests and I had different romantic and sexual feelings than the other kids around me.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] Do you remember kind of your first intense crush on a boy?

Chad Anderson [00:13:45] Yeah, yeah. I had a number of crushes, probably over the Years. But I wouldn't let myself have the crushes, so it would happen. And this is what I go through with my clients a lot. When you grow up, gay or trans, you tend to learn how to divide yourself into pieces. And I think Mormons are really good at this. Anyway, there's the part that you live publicly and then the parts of yourself that you learn how to hide from other people. And when you're gay, that's magnified by a thousand. So I would have crushes subconsciously or internally, but I would never give them voice, even in my own journal, even in my own thinking. So I had lots of crushes and probably particularly as a 15, 16 year old, moving into high school era, I had some pretty significant romantic feelings for some of my friends. One guy in particular that I had.

John Dehlin [00:14:37] Mormon friend.

Chad Anderson [00:14:37] Yeah, Mormon friend. All through high school. But every time any of those feelings would surface, it's what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? So it became anxiety and depression inducing to even have romantic feelings feelings. So there's that kind of counterbalance. I knew that there was something wrong with me or I felt at the time that there was.

Recognizing His Sexuality Growing Up

John Dehlin [00:14:58] So was there a moment in your adolescence where you were like, there's something wrong with me or I'm gay, or was it like, no, I'm straight, but I've just got these weaknesses.

Chad Anderson [00:15:13] How did you experience that? I don't talk about this part a lot in my book, but I was, I was sexually abused as a young kid. And I know a lot of, I know a lot of people who went through that. And then I kind of assumed that because I had been sexually abused, that was the cause of my same sex attractions. So as an adolescent, I viewed any homosexual feelings as a result of the sexual abuse I had undergone. So I felt like I was talking

John Dehlin [00:15:40] about whether it was a male or a female.

Chad Anderson [00:15:41] It was a male, it was a male, it was a male. But being sexually abused is a completely separate thing, a separate healing process than being gay. There's no direct sexual abuse doesn't cause homosexuality or vice versa.

John Dehlin [00:15:55] What if somebody were to say, now wait a minute, you were abused by male and now you're gay? Like it did cause it.

Chad Anderson [00:16:01] Right. There's no correlation. I was abused and I was gay, and those are two completely separate trauma issues and I had to work through both of those.

John Dehlin [00:16:12] Are you saying scientifically, empirically?

Chad Anderson [00:16:14] Yeah, yeah. There's lots of research studies out there on that that say what? That say that there's no direct correlation. It can result. Sexual abuse can result in more feelings of shame or mental illness or emotional struggles. But there's no direct correlation between sexual orientation and sexual abuse. But as a teenager, that's how I saw it. So when I sought out assistance from church leaders frequently, I would ask for help me recover from these things that happened to me as a kid that I had no control over. And I saw myself as broken. But I knew very clearly that I had zero attraction to women socially. I have a lot of female friends, but I had zero sexual attraction to women. And again, I felt like there was something very, very wrong with me. It was probably when I was 15 that I started realizing gay was a thing. And I went to a bishop and kind of admitted out loud for the first time that I am having significant sexual attraction and it's having a lot of problems. And he was very kind and compassionate, and he sent me home with the Miracle of Forgiveness, which is the book that talks all about homosexuality being curable. It's an abomination. If you give into it, then you're evil and wrong. And that book ruined me.

John Dehlin [00:17:27] Did you read it?

Chad Anderson [00:17:28] Oh, yeah, I read it a hundred times. That book ruined me.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] What are some of the things that were said that hurt you?

Chad Anderson [00:17:34] Oh, probably the most painful piece, and I've talked to many other gay Mormons who had this experience, is if you haven't been cured yet, you're not trying hard enough. That, and the fact that it was curable, that it instilled a false hope in me. So I didn't see myself as not only curable of the abuse that I went through, but curable of being gay. And it's not curable. So it created a lot of psychological damage for me because I was a really good teen. I got good grades. I was the kind of guy that moms would hear, oh, you're going to Chad's house, that's fine. You don't need to call or check in. I mean, I was a really trustworthy, good kid.

John Dehlin [00:18:10] What's really interesting about the way sometimes the church handles these books? So I remember when I was a missionary, there were only a few books you were allowed to read on your mission. It was like Articles of Faith and, you know, by James Talmage. What were some of the great apostasy? I don't know. Articles of Faith. Was there another one? I'm already spacing it. Anyway. You could also read A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, and you could read Spencer W. Kimball's Miracle of Forgiveness. So you Know, this is a book that was not only widely read in the church and widely used by bishops, but it was also, you know, pervasively read by young adults and missionaries. Well, now the church has sort of, you know, taken books like, you know, Mormon Doctrine, and it's certainly de emphasizing, if not sort of trying to minimize the amount of people that would buy or purchase Spencer B. Kibble's book. But they don't ever condemn the things that were said in the book. They don't ever tell people to stop reading it or renounce it. And so it's really tricky because these books can be very harmful, but the word never gets out explicitly. And so their impact can still reverberate in 2018, even if the book is either taken out of print or de emphasized. And I should just say there are many, many members of the Kimball family that I know that will admit that Spencer Be Kimball regretted much of the harshness in his book. And. And there are members of the Kimball family I know that are fighting to have the book taken out of print. We even refer to this in my interview with Ed Kimball on Mormon stories a few years ago. But. But here we are. And.

Chad Anderson [00:19:53] Well, and then the. The juxtaposition of we are a church who forgives, we embrace, we want sinners to come to us so we can help them find forgiveness and be right with God. And if you're gay, you're an abomination. You should be struck down. You're not trying hard enough. And so the juxtaposition of I should be helping other people and forgiving other people. And I have a fairly significant amount of childhood trauma that I talk about in the book, including a very abusive stepfather. And the messages we received over and over were, forgive, give them another chance. And yet I'm reading these words in this book that tell me that you're not trying hard enough, you're not good enough. This is an abomination, a crime against nature, et cetera, et cetera. So some of the stories from my adolescence I can almost smile at now. So I remember being 16 and making sure my room was just pristinely like a holy place, Scriptures by my bed. I would listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at night. Huge picture of Jesus. I even tried, not multiple times, but the advice that I think it was Boyd K. Packer gave once, that in order to avoid masturbation or interfering with myself, tying my hand to the headboard at night.

Coming Out to His Bishop as a Teenager

John Dehlin [00:20:58] You did that?

Chad Anderson [00:20:59] I did that a couple of times because I was so constantly tempted. And again, Libido for teenagers, that's a normal thing. But I felt like I was wrong, like I was broken. But I tell one particular story. Sometimes the temptations would get too strong, and I would get up and take the picture of Jesus off the wall and turn it around and turn the music off. And then after masturbation would just feel horribly shameful to the point where sometimes it would induce nausea or vom. Because I felt so terrible. My prayers weren't, God, please love me. It was, I'm so sorry I'm ruining everything. And that's how I saw myself for a lot of that time. There was those parts of me that were so divided and so broken. And that makes me so sad now. But that story, there's a certain amount of humor in it. Taking the picture off the wall and putting it back up. And that was a picture of what, Jesus. Like, huge picture of Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] Oh, you didn't want Jesus seeing you masturbate, Right?

Chad Anderson [00:22:00] Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:01] Yeah. Okay, so. So as. As you. So you confessed, you confessed masturbation or. Sorry, you confessed being gay to your bishop at age 15 or so.

Chad Anderson [00:22:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] He gives you miracle forgiveness. How does your adolescence then advance as you're trying to prepare for a mission, et cetera? But the bishop knows you're. And you, you know, you've admitted to him that. That you were gay.

Chad Anderson [00:22:25] Right, Right. My family was pretty. Was going through some pretty tough stuff. Stuff during that era. We had moved back to Idaho after my parents divorce and my mother married a man who was extremely, verbally, emotionally and physically abusive. And so at the time, it was mostly just my little sister and I in the house. Subsequently, a few years later, my little sister also came out of the closet before I did. And her name is Sherry. I'll talk about her. But we were going through a tremendous amount of emotional struggles in the household, and they didn't divorce until I was 17. So a lot of my adolescence was. Was just dominated by his presence. I didn't have time to focus on being gay. So I kind of had this idea that if I'm really good and try really hard, then I can maybe fix my family was a lot of it. One particular story, there was a night he was just screaming and berating my mother, and I was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and he just was calling her names and being horrib. And I remembered thinking, I have the priesthood, and I'm an honorable priesthood holder. And I stood up in the house and I put my arm to the square and said, by the name of Jesus Christ, I command this evil to leave our home. And nothing happened. And I remember rushing back to my room in tears thinking, here I am, I'm broken, I'm not good enough. Other priesthood holders would be worthy, but because I'm gay, I was not worthy enough to stop this abuse. So my later adolescence was less dominated about homosexuality and more dominated by family trauma and the deep internal shame that I had over being gay. And then I graduated and went on my mission and thought, this will be the thing that fixes everything. And obviously that didn't work.

John Dehlin [00:24:11] So did you have any experiences with sexual experiences with men during high school? Pre mission?

Chad Anderson [00:24:18] I didn't hold hands or kiss anyone until I was 27 years old. And that was the woman who became my wife. And I'll tell that story in a minute.

John Dehlin [00:24:25] Okay.

Chad Anderson [00:24:26] Never. Never a man, never a boy, never a girl. I was so focused on being the good priesthood holder.

Serving a Mission While Navigating Sexuality

John Dehlin [00:24:32] So on your mission, were you ever attracted to companions?

Guest [00:24:36] Constantly.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] And what was that like?

Chad Anderson [00:24:37] It was horrible. My mission started off really roughly. I went to the MTC on December 31, 1997, New Year's Eve, and a week into my mission, Stephen R. Covey came and gave a devotional address to the missionaries in which he talked about, if we have enough faith, we can be healed of any. And I had the most profoundly spiritual experience of my life up to that time. His words just lit me up from inside out. And I knew, I just knew that it was direct answer to prayer. Like this, I can be cured. I can be cured. If my faith is great enough and if my desires are in the right place, I can be cured. And I prayed all day and I fasted all day and I went to bed that night thinking, I am going to see an angel. I remember feeling like that, like this is a first vision level experience. And in the morning when I woke up, nothing was different. The mtc, they have those giant group showers. And it was immediately apparent upon waking up and showering with a bunch of other 19 year olds that I was still gay. And that's cruel, by the way, to say you have to have pure thoughts and you need to keep your thoughts clear. By the way, we're going to make you shower with 20 other guys. That was rough. That was a rough thing. So later that day, I went to the branch president of my little missionary district. I was Only in the MTC 2 and a half weeks and I told him I'd been fasting for a day and a half and I told him I had this answer to Prayer, I can be cured. And he just very sadly put his hand on my shoulder, he'd never met me before, and said, this isn't something you can be cured of. Maybe you can be cured, but it's not the right time for you. God has inspired me to tell you this is a burden that you're meant to carry with you. So I went again into my missionary experience feeling like, just broken. There's nothing that can be done. No matter how great my faith is, I've been meant to carry this burden. So my mission was really largely dominated by depression, honestly. So I had a lot of sexual attractions. My first baptism in my mission was a gay man who admitted he was gay after his baptism. And during his baptismal interview, they said, have you ever been on parole? Have you ever murdered someone? Have you ever been involved in a homosexual relationship? And he refused to move forward after that, saying, how dare you equate being gay with murder? I won't step forward after that. And he was the first outwardly gay person I had ever met. So my mission was pretty tough. I had a lot of tough experiences, and it was really dominated by depression, although I was a very faithful, consistent missionary.

John Dehlin [00:27:23] Okay, so. And I imagine that you spent a lot of time on your knees and a lot of time working, trying to have God take away your sexuality. And you said it was. It's cruel, but. But what I've noticed, you know, my master's thesis was on scrupulosity, which is religious ocd. What I've noticed is that many gay Mormons who are still trying to make it all work exhibit almost extreme forms of religiosity, hyper religiosity with this sort of bargain, that if I'm extra righteous, if I'm extra faithful, you know, God will take this away from me.

Chad Anderson [00:28:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:28:06] Is that kind of how you might have been?

Chad Anderson [00:28:09] Yeah, although I think it probably went half and half. And this describes my entire 20s as well, by the way, this. I'd spend about 50% of my time hyper religious. I'm going to do everything to the 100th degree. And then the. The other half the time I just went through the motions. I was just too shut off to do anything more than just go through. I mean, I was faithful consistently. Temple attendance and sacrament meeting and callings and missionary, but about half of the time I just felt shut off, like it was never going to be good enough. But. So I think yes to both of those. And speaking psychologically, I think a lot of times people who are in traumatic situations think if I can just be the woman who's being consistently beat by her husband, thinks if I can just keep the house clean and make sure the kids are taken care of, then he'll love me. I think that when you're being abused spiritually, physically, emotionally, that hyper religiosity, or if I can be better, is an attempt to reconcile the reality of your life with a way to escape it. I think that's a pretty common thing with anyone who goes through trauma.

John Dehlin [00:29:23] Patricia writes, were you pressured by others to serve a mission, or was it more an internal drive or push to serve?

Chad Anderson [00:29:30] You know, there were seven kids in my family. I was the only one who served a mission. And I always felt like I was the one who was going to do the whole Mormon thing and be really good at it. So there wasn't a, you know, you must serve a mission from anyone. But it just was the expectation from my family and for myself.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] Okay, so it's all you. So anything else about your mission related to your journey as a gay Mormon man? For sure.

Chad Anderson [00:29:59] I mean, so many stories. I had a couple of companions that I just fell head over heels in love with and others that I felt completely bullied by. I mean, there's a lot of individual stories. Another really significant story. There was a period of time when I was in that hyper religious phase and working really hard, and again, kind of subconsciously thinking, if I can work hard enough, then I'll be cured, I'll be fixed, I'll be amended. And my companion and I were assaulted. I was in Philadelphia by a group of men in the street, and my companion didn't get touched, but I got punched multiple times and knocked unconscious during a mugging. And that experience altered the remaining parts of my mission. I no longer trusted. I kind of stopped praying, or when I would pray, it would be just by rote. There was no feeling or emotion in it. I kind of stopped trusting God at that point. It just. I couldn't do enough. And here, now these men are. I'm supposed to be protected, and now these men are hurting me. And it became a very significant turning point for me as far as. I mean, I went through violence at home, and now I'm out here and being subjected to violence again. That was a rough patch, too.

Life After His Mission and Pursuing Marriage

John Dehlin [00:31:18] So what did you do after your mission?

Chad Anderson [00:31:21] I went immediately to college and did six straight years of college.

John Dehlin [00:31:27] Where'd you go?

Chad Anderson [00:31:28] Ricks College at first, before it was BYU Idaho. It turned into BYU Idaho while I was there, and then Boise State University and eventually Eastern Washington. University for my graduate degree. And my first. No, excuse me, second semester of college is when I met Maggie, who's the woman who would become my wife much later. So I was just off a mission. She was just out of high school.

John Dehlin [00:31:51] Do you use real names in the book or do you use.

Chad Anderson [00:31:54] I use some real names and some pseudonyms. Maggie is a pseudonym.

John Dehlin [00:31:57] Okay.

Chad Anderson [00:31:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] So. So you go back to Rick's and there are all these sort of people super excited, all these students super excited to date and. And you're still gay?

Chad Anderson [00:32:10] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:32:10] What's that like trying to date at Rick's, at a BYU school when you're gay?

Chad Anderson [00:32:16] I didn't date. I avoided dating a lot. I threw myself into. I worked full time. I would take 18 or 21 credits and that. I was often, like, starring in a school play. I joined the choir. I started an acapella group and a comedy troupe. I kept myself so busy, plus church callings that I wouldn't have time to focus. But I did date. And there were so many awkward encounters. There'd be the third date, and I like to think I was somewhat handsome and I was the good Mormon boy. So there were girls interested in. And you'd get to the third date and there'd be that moment at the end of the date where the girl would expect you to lean in and kiss her. And I would find a reason not to. I couldn't do it. I couldn't. And so there were lots of like, what's wrong with me? Did I do something to hurt you? Am I not pretty enough? And I realized I was hurting people. So I just stopped dating. I just shut it off. I kind of had this. I can't get married, but I can't be gay. So I guess I will just live hoping eventually I would find somebody that would make that different for me. But I spent several years in my twenties just shut off.

John Dehlin [00:33:28] So I have a question that may seem a little bit weird. So. So you're gay. I'm projecting back to that time. You're gay, but you really want to live the gospel and you really want to find someone and so you go on dates. I could imagine just saying, well, I'm just going to like, almost like the principles behind exposure therapy. I'm just gonna kiss girls and kiss girls and kiss girls until I like it. Now I, of course, have no. I've never tried really to kiss a man. So I. I don't know what that would be like, but I would imagine that thought might occur to you and just try that.

Chad Anderson [00:34:01] Do you know what I kept hoping at the time? I was doing a lot of theater all through high school and college, and I kept hoping I would get cast in some sort of leading man role that would require me to kiss a girl on stage, because then I wouldn't. I'd have to do it. And I could see how it felt, but I never did. And on dates, I just couldn't do it. I'm not wired for women. I just found myself completely incapable. I'd freeze. So, yes, the thoughts were there, but I just. I couldn't. And I know other gay men who could and who were able or who maybe had a little bit more of a bisexual.

John Dehlin [00:34:36] So on the Kinsey.

Chad Anderson [00:34:38] I have an emotional attraction to women. I have a lot of really close female friends that I'm very attracted to on that level, but there's nothing physical in it.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] So you're a six?

Chad Anderson [00:34:47] Physically, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] Okay. Okay.

Chad Anderson [00:34:50] But on an emotional level, I mean. And I'll talk about Maggie, but we had a really robust, healthy marriage in every category except sexually.

John Dehlin [00:34:57] Okay. So was. And my daughter Anna has done research on aversion. There's not. You know, it's one thing to attract attractions, to track attractions. It's another thing to track aversion. Did you experience sort of sexual aversion to the opposite sex?

Chad Anderson [00:35:17] Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair.

John Dehlin [00:35:19] That's a whole different ball game, right?

Chad Anderson [00:35:21] Yes. Yeah. When I fantasized, it was about men. When I had sexual dreams of any kind, it was about men. In dating women again, I didn't even hold hands. I couldn't do the physical thing. It would be a kind of a light hug at the end of a date. It just. It wasn't there for me ever.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] Okay, so you. So you just throw yourself into theater and schoolwork and jobs and stay really busy?

Guest [00:35:48] Yeah.

Chad Anderson [00:35:48] 3.9 GPA and 21 credits and 18 credits. And, yeah, I kept every moment really, really busy all through my early 20s, I should note.

John Dehlin [00:35:58] We have a comment here from Scott. Scotty Claussen. He writes, thanks for sharing your story. Chad, one of your missionary mission companions here. We knocked on the door of the gay man that was baptized.

Chad Anderson [00:36:11] Hey, Scott.

John Dehlin [00:36:12] I remember him talking about how much he liked Donny Osmond. I had no idea you were gay. And I really enjoyed serving together. Thanks for sharing. Nothing but respect for you, my man. Now, have you been in touch with.

Chad Anderson [00:36:25] No.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] No, no. Oh, so this is like a first.

Chad Anderson [00:36:27] Scott was my mission trainer. I haven't seen Scott since March of 1998. Hey, it's great to hear from you, Matt. I'll totally reach out after this. I hope you're well.

John Dehlin [00:36:35] Isn't that great?

Chad Anderson [00:36:36] That's fantastic.

John Dehlin [00:36:37] Facebook. Amazing.

Chad Anderson [00:36:37] What a small world.

John Dehlin [00:36:39] Also, Michael writes. Just hearing him talk, I bet he's a tremendous social worker, a big help to those who go to see him. So Michael's liking what you're putting down.

Chad Anderson [00:36:50] Thank you. Thank you, Michael.

John Dehlin [00:36:52] All right. Yeah, we want to thank. We want to thank anyone who's tuned in live for your questions and comments. Please post more. It makes the interview really fun and interesting. So how did you go to finding someone to marry when you were doing everything to avoid it?

Chad Anderson [00:37:09] I'll fast forward through a little bit of the story here, but push myself into graduate school. I'm still feeling very.

John Dehlin [00:37:16] Okay, so you did the full undergrad?

Chad Anderson [00:37:18] Yeah, yeah, Six years straight of school. I didn't take any breaks.

John Dehlin [00:37:21] No. But you. Your undergrad then? No significant dating?

Chad Anderson [00:37:24] No, no. No relationships, no girlfriends, no engagements.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] And were people like, saying, what's the deal? Why aren't you married? Sure.

Chad Anderson [00:37:31] And I use the. I'm in school. I'm being a good Mormon boy. The right person hasn't come along yet, so lots of excuses.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] And this may be offensive to say, and it may be stereotypical, but I'm just gonna. This is a part of growing people's awareness. You don't present necessarily as a stereotypically gay man.

Chad Anderson [00:37:50] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:50] And I don't know if that's something that you worked on or if that's

Chad Anderson [00:37:53] just who you are. No, this is just me.

John Dehlin [00:37:55] So when you talk about trying to manage, you know, letting on as a child, there was never any speech patterns or behaviors that you tried to manage?

Chad Anderson [00:38:06] Again, I was not sports oriented. I've always been more creative. Show choir and drama. So, I mean, there's some elements of that. But as far as presentation, I don't often get that. I'm a very feminine in presentation. I have a lot of friends are, and I feel like I just have to toss out the caveat. I feel like there's a bias toward masculine gaze, the feminine gaze. Guys who present more effeminate are often shamed for that, as if they are less than masculine gaze. And they're treated that way in the gay community and in the straight community. So I don't want to. I'm not superior in any way. But as on a fact level, no, I did not present as. As very feminine in my mannerisms.

John Dehlin [00:38:58] So that would have. That would have just made it so people are like, come on, dude, get married. You know what's going on.

Chad Anderson [00:39:03] Right. That said, I know a lot of Mormon straight guys who are really feminine who have a lot of effeminate presentation.

John Dehlin [00:39:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

Chad Anderson [00:39:10] So had I. Had I been feminine, I don't know that it would. Would have made any difference.

John Dehlin [00:39:12] Yeah. So you did six years of school, never really dating?

Chad Anderson [00:39:17] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:39:17] Okay.

Chad Anderson [00:39:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:18] And was that getting your social worker degree?

Chad Anderson [00:39:20] Yeah, yeah. I got my master's in social work about my fourth year in school. Maggie and I had dated off and on, just kind of randomly, and she frequently grew very frustrated because I wouldn't advance the relationship. She went on a mission, and I was in Boise, and my little sister, who's three years younger than me, came out of the closet at that time, while living with me, she came to live with me. So my little sister Sherry is very, very special to me, but I felt very responsible for her. I was the man of the house. I was the priesthood holder. And when she came out of the closet, I took it as a personal failure, and I was horrible to her. My entire family was.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] Were you out to your family by this time?

Chad Anderson [00:40:00] Oh, no, no, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] Okay, so you'd come out to that bishop.

Chad Anderson [00:40:03] Just that bishop. That's it.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] What about your mission president?

Chad Anderson [00:40:05] Nope. Okay, so you had one therapist and that one bishop and then the branch president guy in the mtc. Those are the only people I had ever told.

John Dehlin [00:40:15] So you kept. You stayed in the closet for a super long time?

Chad Anderson [00:40:18] I was locked up, man.

John Dehlin [00:40:19] Yeah.

Chad Anderson [00:40:20] So my little sister came out and my whole family were horrible. I would yell at her as if I was her authoritarian priesthood holder.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Okay, so wait, so you're gay? You know you're gay.

Chad Anderson [00:40:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:33] And yet your sister comes out as lesbian, and you're, like, worse to her

Chad Anderson [00:40:37] than maybe than anyone had been to me about the gay thing.

John Dehlin [00:40:40] Explain how that happens.

Chad Anderson [00:40:42] I think psychologically I was so wrapped up in being the good Mormon boy and curing myself, and her coming out at that time then represented to me another personal failure. Not only that, but if she's going to come out and she's broken, then what hope is there for me? And so you're going to start drinking and smoking, and you're never going to make it into heaven. You're severing your family bonds. What's wrong with you and Sherry? My entire family. And I won't rat anyone else out, but my entire family, my sisters, my brother, my parents were all really awful to her. She's very happy now she's married and living on the east coast and we're very close. We speak multiple times per week. I'm close with she and her wife Heather, but she had a few pretty rough years there of she left. She moved to the east coast and said, I am going to live life on my terms. And we were pretty broken there for a while, I think.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] And I'm not trying to tell you about your experience, but I think feeling like a failure might explain part of it. But there's also this internalized homophobia.

Chad Anderson [00:41:54] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:41:55] That's gotta also explain why some of the most ardent opponents of same sex sexuality, same sex love, same sex marriage, turn out to be gay. What is that?

Chad Anderson [00:42:06] If you're, if you're gay, then you're broken. You're not trying hard enough. That's how I viewed it at the time. I knew other gay people that were not Mormon and I was very kind and loving toward them, but to be Mormon and gay was unacceptable.

John Dehlin [00:42:18] And did you self identify as gay or did you self identify as straight?

Chad Anderson [00:42:22] Around that time I was. This is 24. I started using the same sex attracted term.

John Dehlin [00:42:27] Tell us what's what, what is why that term is used and what's problematic about it.

Chad Anderson [00:42:32] Well, I didn't have the words for this until later, but you start reading the texts or I would look up things privately and there'd be paragraphs about. Don't use the word gay. Gay represents a dangerous identity. It associates you with a community of people who are evil, who are sexually active, who are part of everything that we do not stand for as a religion. But if you say you're same sex attracted or same gender, wired is another term I heard. Or even homo. Emotionally damaged was a term I heard. If you use these terms, you can accept that there's something wrong that you're trying to make right. But the word gay was dangerous. There was, there was a fear associated with that.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Okay. And no, no one would have asked you, are you gay at that time when you were a college student? So you. But internally you would not have identified. You would have identified as same sex attracted, correct?

Chad Anderson [00:43:31] Yeah. I went to a therapist.

John Dehlin [00:43:33] And you would have told your sister this, by the way.

Chad Anderson [00:43:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:43:36] You would or would not?

Chad Anderson [00:43:36] I would have. Well, after she came out. Okay, you're not gay, you're same sex attracted or you're being selfish. Which is the, which is the phrase the miracle of forgiveness uses. Someone who says they're gay. It's just a particular form of selfishness.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] But would you have said, hey, I'm same sex attract.

Chad Anderson [00:43:51] No, I didn't tell her.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] Okay, so isn't that interesting? She's coming out to you. She's vulnerable.

Chad Anderson [00:43:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:57] And even if you disapprove, you could still say, you know what? I get what you're going through because I experienced this too, but here's how I'm dealing with it. What kept you from going there?

Chad Anderson [00:44:08] Yeah. I was incapable of responding with compassion, which is bizarre because in every other area of our lives at the time, I was compassionate and kind and understanding. I gave her a place to live. And I tell her story pretty openly in my book. And that's not a pseudonym. Her name is Sherry. She's very open with her story. Also, after she came out, I went to a therapist, a non Mormon therapist for the first time ever. And I started talking about my problems. And he in session said, chad, I think you're gay. And I was like, how dare you? I was furious and I left and never came back. I was so mad that he put that term on me. So that's just where I was at the time. Emotionally, so powerful. Yeah, it was awful at the time.

Knowing He Was Gay Before Marrying

John Dehlin [00:44:50] Yeah.

Chad Anderson [00:44:50] And Sherry and I laugh now. I mean, growing up, I was the kid who hosted the dinner parties and was in the high school show choir. She was the one bedroom over, never wore makeup, wore boy clothes to school. The fact that we were so emotionally close but didn't know each other, were gay is almost hilarious. But we're very close now. So if we fast forward to the age of 26, I'm finishing graduate school, more years of depression. Maggie came home off of her mission and moved to be near me. And we started spending a lot of time together. And at this point it had been six years, which is a pretty long Mormon courtship. Although we'd never been a serious item. That's forever is a long time. So she sat me down one day and was very emotional and very angry and said, we clearly like each other. If we're moving toward a future, then what is wrong? Like, you've never held my hand, You've never kissed me. I said, I've never held anyone's hand. I've never kissed anyone. And I told her that I was gay.

John Dehlin [00:45:52] How do you do a six year courtship and never, like, have any intimacy, physical intimacy?

Chad Anderson [00:46:00] I don't know how to answer that.

John Dehlin [00:46:02] And what would keep her hanging on?

Chad Anderson [00:46:03] I don't know how to answer that except that we were really fond of each other and everything else in our relationship was really good. But so that night when she confronted me, why haven't you ever kissed me? I told her I was gay. And I immediately corrected myself. That was the first time I'd ever used the word gay out loud. Same sex, attracted, not gay. She said, what does that mean? And I said, well, I'm attracted to men. I've never kissed anyone. And she said, well, do you like me? And I said, I do. And that was our first kiss. Immediately after telling her I was gay,

John Dehlin [00:46:33] was our first kiss instigated by you or her?

Chad Anderson [00:46:37] I think instigated by her and me realizing if I don't kiss her right now, then I'm never going to. So I think there was a lot of pressure I was putting on myself, like, this is my moment. And I was 26, turning 27. I mean, that's a long time.

John Dehlin [00:46:54] So you didn't like, you weren't attracted to women. So what was that like to kiss Maggie?

Chad Anderson [00:46:59] It wasn't. And I want to be very gentle because she's still a big part of my life. It's nothing about her. On a spiritual level, she is the most wonderful person and physically she's a beautiful person. That's just not what I'm wired for. So it was a, oh, I didn't feel anything, but I recognized that it made her happy and if I could make her happy, then maybe I was okay. And that became the basis for our entire marriage. We married three months later in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:47:34] Three months?

Chad Anderson [00:47:34] Yeah, really quickly after that in the temple and got a home and started our life. And as long as I could make sure she was happy, I didn't have to feel anything. So all the obsession I put into taking care of my family as a teenager toward being the perfect college student as a 20 something, then my obsession turned into if I can take care of her and create this perfect Mormon house, then that's, that's all my world needs.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] So just checking in with our listeners.

Chad Anderson [00:48:06] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] Sherry K. Writes. Hey, Chad, Sherry here. Love you.

Chad Anderson [00:48:09] That's my sister.

John Dehlin [00:48:10] Is that your sister?

Chad Anderson [00:48:10] Yeah, I love you too.

John Dehlin [00:48:11] So shout out to Sherry. Megan writes, do you think your reaction to your sisters coming out would have been more supportive if your family hadn't been so upset by it? Was their reaction a deterrent to your eventual coming out?

Chad Anderson [00:48:25] Oh, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Seeing the. When I say violence, I don't mean physical, but seeing the violence which with they responded to Sherry, absolutely knocked me even farther back. I saw Sherry as straying from the fold and we had, I mean, I had other family members who were not active in the church, who had used drugs, who had been in jail, who had been drinking. My family is not without problems by any means, but her coming out was worse than all of those things. So the way that my family reacted absolutely knocked me farther back.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] Thanks for that question, Megan. Eric writes. Actually, Whitney writes, chad, you are a beacon and a light. So much love for you.

Chad Anderson [00:49:11] Thanks, Whitney.

John Dehlin [00:49:12] Eric writes, your story is like mine and I appreciate you telling it. And your experiences with your family is exactly like mine. My sister said that there was no such thing as gay. My therapist said I wasn't gay and that I needed conversion therapy if I wanted it. I've been sent a therapist since I was 18. You are lucky to be young now and figure three things out sooner. Not like me when I was in my 20s and in the 80s and 90s and had to live through decades of abuse from the church and society. The church acknowledges us to say now, back when I was a kid, I was evil. I will never get over what was pounded into my psyche.

Chad Anderson [00:49:51] Eric, I'm sorry, man. My heart goes out to you and yeah, I speak that same language. I understand.

John Dehlin [00:49:59] Yeah, love to you, Eric. And so sorry. So you get married.

Chad Anderson [00:50:06] We got married. And I think in the back of my brain I thought, well, now I'm straight because I'm married. But the same sex attraction feelings didn't go away. That divided part of me, that part that I just kept shoving away got violent with me. It started screaming out to be noticed and I would just shove it down and push it down and throw myself into church service. And again, Maggie and I outwardly had a very happy marriage. We hosted parties during which we had lots of Mormon couples that would come over and they would say things like, chad's, not like my husband. We'd get a lot of that stuff. But we lived around some of my sisters. We had a very vibrant family life. Elders quorum president, Gospel doctrine teacher.

John Dehlin [00:50:56] You were?

Chad Anderson [00:50:56] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was all in. And plus I was working 40, 50, 60 hours a week in my, in my job.

John Dehlin [00:51:03] Doing what?

Chad Anderson [00:51:04] Therapy and child protection work and drug. And drug and addiction work. So working as a social worker.

John Dehlin [00:51:10] Let me, let me just ask you really quick. So going back to when you told her you were gay and then you kiss her and then you're married three months later. There are a lot of women who enter into these mixed orientation marriages. They're faithful. They hear about Ty Mansfield or they hear about Josh and Lally Weed and they say, oh. Or they go to these North Star conferences or back then maybe it was Evergreen. And they hear these people testify. You know, we did it, we do it, we make it work. You know, you can do it too sort of thing. What do you think? And I know you can't speak for your ex wife, but what, what is the process for a believing female to get to the point where she's willing to marry a gay male with full awareness? How does that happen? Why wouldn't they just run away?

Chad Anderson [00:52:02] She's been asked this question. We've done presentations together before and we've had lots of conversations over the years. In her mind, gay wasn't a thing. It wasn't a thing. She heard me tell her that I was gay and it just didn't resonate. It was, here's this man that I love and he's a good priesthood holder and we take care of each other and he wants to make me happy. And that was enough.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] And what would keep her from saying something like, I want to be cherished physically and loved romantically? And by the way, it's dangerous to marry a gay person because they might, they might be unfulfilled and may not love you and may not make you feel good and you may lose self esteem and they may seek out physical intimacy elsewhere because they're not getting in the marriage. And I mean, they're all in the. And the divorce rates, by the way, you know, according to our research, are upwards of 70%. Sure. So what, what keeps sort of all those things that should be this day, this, this sort of danger. Will Robinson red warning labels. What keeps a Mormon woman from sort of knowing all that and processing all that to impact their decision?

Chad Anderson [00:53:10] She wasn't talked, it wasn't talked about. It wasn't a language that she spoke at the time. Now she could easily stand up and tell the story of what it's like for a straight woman marrying a gay man in a Mormon marriage. But she saw a righteous, worthy priesthood holder. And again, we really clicked on every other level. And so for her it was okay. It was okay. I think that we have to have a wider discussion about, about misogyny in the church and the patriarchy of the Mormon culture. Not only the Mormon culture, but the American culture of women who think they can fix men or women who are willing to overlook certain things because they're so. They just want to be happy. We teach girls from very young that your value is related to your virtue and you need to find a good priesthood holder. I mean, there's all of these mixed messages that Go along with that. That's a whole separate conversation that could go on for hours. But I think that there's certainly some elements to that the same of unless you're married in the temple, you have very little value in Mormon society. So find a good priesthood holder. And historically, people who grow up gay and Mormon are really good priesthood holders. Not all of them by any means, but they're the really true blue active people. And so there's a level of attraction for women. And that's the part that's kind of heartbreaking here, is because Maggie was fully invested into me.

John Dehlin [00:54:39] She was attracted to you.

Chad Anderson [00:54:40] Right. But I was a broken person. She fell in love with someone who was broken.

John Dehlin [00:54:44] Yeah. So I think part of the point I'm trying to make is there's just this basic lack of information available in Mormon culture. You know, I did all this research for my dissertation that's been published. Now what I wanted is just sort of it to be widely known within Mormonism that yes, it is within your right as a human being to marry who you want to marry. And yes, there probably is such a thing as a mixed orientation marriage that does. Okay. My goal has never been to sort of make it so that's illegal or shamed or, you know, to even ever make the claim that no one should do it. But my view is no Mormon woman should ever marry a gay man or any other combination of a mixed orientation marriage that might occur without knowing that the divorce rates are triple what, you know, what other divorce rates might be, that quality of life is lower than people who report lupus, which is a debilitating disease. That's usually because the female in these relationships does not feel wanted or desired. That's because there are all sorts of problems with sexual intimacy, self esteem, there are problems with depression, there are problems with sexual identity distress. And just kind of more often than not, really unhealthy, unfulfilling lives that end in divorce with children impacted. Right. And so I guess, you know, it's odd in, in the 2000s or even 2000 teens that this isn't just sort of widely understood such that a woman like you, like Maggie, wouldn't just sort of have all that at her disposal when she's considering that marriage.

Chad Anderson [00:56:44] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] So that then she could make a really informed. And I'm just curious, what was it about? Because it wasn't like it wasn't known back then that this happened. Right?

Chad Anderson [00:56:56] Yeah, but she and I both had pretty sheltered upbringings. I mean, I came from a pretty tragic family background. She came from a very happy Mormon nuclear family. Mom, dad, daughter, son, active in church, loving, consistent family. And she just didn't know the word gay. Didn't send off any alarm bells for her. And again, that's how she, I think, would answer that question. And there's also, in a recent conversation with my mother, my mom and I are very close. She's still very active. She has two gay kids. And she very carefully skirts the line of loving her gay children and being active in her church. But she asked me in a recent conversation, she says, are people who are gay really happy? Because I see so much evidence of depression and anxiety and suicidality. And gay people like, what is that? And we talked about. I compared it to young girls who are raised and are told, you should try for a particular field, maybe you should just be a wife, but if you have to work, be a nurse or a teacher, if we had someone then saying, why aren't there more girl scientists? Or why aren't there more girl mathematicians? There's a direct correlation between that, between the value that we're raised with. When you have an entire group of people who are represented in every area of society, every religion, every skin color, every country who are being told, you're wrong, you're broken. Of course gay people are raised with depression and confusion and anxiety. It's going to be higher represented based on childhood experience as a feeling different. So we have a lot of work to do. That said, on the flip side of all that, gay people, and particularly transgender people who go through the work of trans, of coming to terms with their childhood and owning who they are, they are the happiest, the most vibrant, incredible people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing in my entire life. And that's directly opposed to this idea that if you just work harder in the church, then you'll be happy. Utah has. I'm tangentially going off here, but Utah has the highest rates of suicide among teens, depression among women and men, gender discrimination in the workplace. There's all of these things that do not correlate with the message that Mormonism is delivers as far as just follow the rules and everyone will be happy. It's opposite of that, there's higher rates of depression and shaming. That was not the answer to your question, but I think there's a correlation there.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] I'm just saying there's something about fundamentalist religions where people are sheltered when there's so much information and reason for them to sort of know that there's concern or data or danger. Somehow fundamentalist orthodox religions can raise a kid to be 21, 25, 27 and not just know some of the basic facts of life.

Chad Anderson [00:59:42] Not even just 21, 25, 27, but 60, 62, 75. I have clients who are elderly who are just coming out of the closet.

John Dehlin [00:59:49] Yeah. And so it's just something to be thoughtful about is how do we get the word out? How do we get the word out in a culture that sometimes warns and scares people away from learning very basic things?

Chad Anderson [01:00:02] Right.

John Dehlin [01:00:02] Because do you think. Do you think that today there are young couples at byu, Idaho, where the boy comes out to the girl as gay and then the girl is like, I can do this. We can do this. I mean, do you think this is still happening?

Chad Anderson [01:00:16] Do I think it still happens? Yes. And I think it happens frequently.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Yeah, exactly.

Chad Anderson [01:00:20] It's not. It's not an uncommon.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] 18.

Chad Anderson [01:00:23] Yes. It's not an uncommon isolated encounter.

John Dehlin [01:00:26] Yeah. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. Rocks is a featured single on Angela Sof's upcoming album Second Wind, inspired by her struggle with the faith journey out of orthodox religion. You can find and follow her on social media as Angela Sof.

Chad Anderson [01:01:01] Bam.

John Dehlin [01:01:02] That's S O F F E on Spotify or angelasof.com.

Guest [01:01:19] So judge me Cast me your stones I will lay them back at your feet Take my hand let's walk among we like to throw rocks at the people who don't see the world in the way we do I don't know why we all say Stand in a circle and point a finger or two Tell me how can you see what is buried beneath a mountain of smiles? We're all thrown in the same blue water of the unknown so leave your rocks at home. The truth is not what it seems we are told to just be believing the story has never been told and we all need someone to listen to hold our hearts is there beating with so much.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 875

Chad Anderson [00:00:00] We like to throw rocks at the people who don't see the world in the way we do.

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners. To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Okay, so you, you get married to Maggie and you're superstar Elders Corn president working super hard.

Struggles Within His Marriage

Chad Anderson [00:01:05] Gospel doctrine teacher. I started writing more at the time. I was writing comic books, of all things, but just throwing myself into work. And I got fat. I, I. Yeah, you put on a lot of weights. Yeah, I put on, like, 65 pounds of weight. It was started. It started 10, 20, then it turned into 75, 80. And I was inwardly and outwardly depressed. So depressed I didn't think that I could ever possibly be happy. I resigned myself to the fact that I got married and I'm doing everything right, and I still feel terrible. So this is just the way it's gonna be. I stopped caring. Then we had a baby. And the sex part of our life was very infrequent. I won't go into a lot of detail there, just out of respect to Maggie, but it was very infrequent and very.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] You do mention your wedding night, though, is a chapter in the book.

Chad Anderson [00:02:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] What's that like? What are you comfortable sharing about?

Chad Anderson [00:02:04] Yeah, our wedding night. I mean, everybody's done the Mormon marriage thing. Everybody who has done it. It's such an exhausting day of temple ceremony and reception and dinner. And then there's the honeymoon. And she was so excited, and I was so full of dread, and we were able to consummate our relationship. And she fell asleep in my arms, happy. And I lay awake with the lights on in our. In our room, crying for two hours because it didn't feel any different. Like, I gave up myself and I didn't feel. I felt horrible. It wasn't a pleasurable experience for me. So sex became very infrequent. It was very. It's very sa. It's very sad.

John Dehlin [00:02:55] Was this something you could have shared with her how devastating wedding night was?

Chad Anderson [00:02:59] Not at the time.

John Dehlin [00:03:00] You just had to privately mourn and grieve.

Chad Anderson [00:03:02] Yeah. And then, and then for the next few years of our relationship, it was me finding reasons to avoid sex as often as possible.

John Dehlin [00:03:09] And I would imagine, you know, in a very communicative relationship, it would be like. It'd be your wedding night. And she'd be like, well, how is this for you? Is this hard? Is this difficult? And then afterwards it's like, how are you doing? Checking in with you. But that's someone who. Maybe it's had some clinical or psychological trigger.

Chad Anderson [00:03:26] Yeah, maybe.

John Dehlin [00:03:27] How is that handled in a. In a real relationship?

Chad Anderson [00:03:30] We were able to laugh a little bit about it, but it's. But it's just sad. I mean, during.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] I would imagine you avoid talking about it some. She might pretend it isn't there.

Chad Anderson [00:03:38] But even that night, even our wedding night, there was lots of me making like, ugh. Like I was nervous and anxious and frankly. And again, this has nothing to do with Maggie, but more just to do with me being a gay man who was with a woman. I was grossed out and confused. And again, it was another example of maybe I will feel better and I didn't. And imagine being the woman going through that when you've saved yourself from marriage and the person that you're with has a look on his face where instead of being hungry for you, he's grossed out. What does that do to your self esteem, your psychology? So for women out there don't marry gay men, for straight guys don't marry gay women. It does a lot of damage.

John Dehlin [00:04:21] So when someone like Josh Weed or a. Or a Ty Mansfield says, I'm in love with my wife and the sex is great, or whatever it is they say, I mean, I guess, number one, they could be bisexual. Number two, they. It could be true. Or number three, they could be in denial.

Chad Anderson [00:04:40] And I think, I think I cannot speak for anyone else, but historically and overwhelmingly, in my experience with gay Mormon peers and gay Mormon clients, and it's more along the lines of my experience where I was pretending and trying to convince myself that everything was okay. But there certainly are examples out there where people may be more bisexual or where they're very happy with their spouse. And I cannot speak for any of them. I won't speak for Josh Wheat or for Ty Mansfield, both of whom I've met many times. Not many. A few times. But there may be examples out there where the person is okay in those cases. I would think that they're more isolated because we have a pool of people who've grown up hating themselves.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] And what I've seen following this field and industry for so long, it's this story with Josh And Lali, I think they were sincere when they were telling their story. But you do see this whole Exodus International, there's this whole organization for evangelical Christians where individual gay men and couples would sort of parade themselves around as role models, where they're willing to admit years later that it was all kind of a fraud, it wasn't true that they were in denial or they were deceiving people. And that's what makes this whole thing so difficult. Again, I'm not trying to speak for Ty Mansfield or anyone as well, but there's something that we need to be more clear eyed about and maybe even call out, which is these people that do hold themselves up for role models, we need to understand that there's sort of like this predictable. Add 5, add 10 years, add 20 years and you find out that they, many of them were either depressed or suicidal or in denial or were having sex, you know, side private sexual lives. And so many of them turn out to turn out to be fraudulent.

Chad Anderson [00:06:36] We can, and this is, this is a slight tangent, but we can even take that a little bit farther in that I, and perhaps I'll talk about this at the end, but I've devoted the last few years of my life in large part to doing research on gay hate crimes and oftentimes men who horribly kill other gay men or transgender women of color who are the most attacked population in the world per capita, it's often because they have feelings of shame about their own sexuality in the first place. I mean, we can take it that much farther. So there's a lot of internal psychological hatred. I'm not drawing a direction parallel between mixed orientation and marriage. But when I have done presentations on this, I was never the guy that said, look, I'm gay and I'm happily married. I've been the guy who didn't start telling my story until after coming out. I was married. It didn't work for me. But I've had people ask me questions like, you were lying to your wife that whole time then? And I guess, sure I was, but I didn't realize that I was. My own training religiously and culturally told me that this is the way I was supposed to do things. Now I can look back and realize, oh man, I should have come out at 15 and just left the things that hurt me behind. But that's not who I was at the time. So was I lying? Yes. But I wasn't cheating on my wife. I wasn't sleeping around. I was a good Mormon guy, I was a great priesthood holder and I Felt broken and depressed and terrible about myself constantly. Constantly. So there's a lot of self hatred. So when I disowned my sister for coming out, it's because I was hating myself.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] You disowned her?

Chad Anderson [00:08:09] It was, get out of my life. We started speaking shortly after that, but there was a period of time where I told her to get away.

John Dehlin [00:08:16] So you got super. You gained a ton of weight.

Chad Anderson [00:08:19] Yeah, yeah, I got really. I got really heavy. And then we had a kid. And I think in my brain, the birth of my son would be the thing that finally showed God that I was gonna try and he'd make me straight. And it didn't work again. That said, becoming a father is the single best thing that's ever happened to me. So my older son, I just call him J in the book. He's nine now. I talk about his birth and holding him in my hands. And anybody who's ever become a dad knows what that's like. Or a mom. It's just incredible. Everything about me didn't matter anymore. It was all about him. And I started having this realization that he's going to grow up with this very depressed father who really hates himself. And that's the kind of dad that I grew up with. And I didn't want that. So I'm fast forwarding a little bit here, but I made the decision at a certain point to start losing my weight. Like, I want my son to have a healthy, happy father. And so I started eating right and exercising. And that was the point where my marriage started having some problems because I started doing something for me. Really, for the first time.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] Yeah. You mentioned in the book that maybe she was a little bit envious or uncomfortable with you getting.

Chad Anderson [00:09:32] Well, she saw me starting to become well, and it changed the balance in our relationship.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] Why would that be troubling to her?

Chad Anderson [00:09:40] I think that we subconsciously. I think we just had a particular balance in our relationship. And when I started to change that, it was uncomfortable. And again, out of respect to her, I'm not going to say. I'm not going to go into too much detail there, but I think that there was a level of resentment that I was seeking to be. To find myself outside of the relationship. And so starting to lose the weight was the beginning of that process.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] And so you're getting healthy, and then how does that sort of put your life on a new trajectory?

Chad Anderson [00:10:18] So I'm still Elders Quorum president. A little time goes by, and despite the infrequency in our intimacy, she got pregnant A second time. And for me, that was the.

John Dehlin [00:10:31] Are you comfortable saying kind of what the. The dearth of frequency would be in terms of sexual.

Chad Anderson [00:10:36] You know, it depends on parts of our relationship. There were times when it'd be every couple weeks. There'd be times when a few months would go by, so. So pretty infrequent.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] Okay. Okay. So pregnancy. Pregnancy might be hard to come by.

Chad Anderson [00:10:50] Pregnancy surprised me a lot.

John Dehlin [00:10:52] Yeah. Okay.

Chad Anderson [00:10:53] So the second pregnancy, I had just started getting physically well. And there was just this ominousness about the second pregnancy. It was the nail in the coffin sound effect in my brain. This is the rest of my life. I'm going to be miserable forever. And it had nothing to do with Maggie or my children, but it had everything to do with the fact that I had spent over 30 years feeling terrible about myself, and I just needed out. I started getting frantic anxiety. I considered joining the military briefly, which was bizarre for me. I put all of my energy towards that for a bit. I started getting really vocally critical of church for the first time. I remember giving a talk in sacrament meeting. Again, I was Elders Quorum president. And my entire talk. This is the last time I spoke in church. My entire talk was, being Mormon is impossible, but we just have to, like, dig in and make it happen, because even when it sucks, this is just what we do. That was my last talk in church.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] That's the great plan of happiness. Right? Even if Mormonism sucks, we got to do it anyway. Right?

Chad Anderson [00:12:06] Right. But Maggie and I just kind of went through the motions, and we just. We weren't doing well. And at the age of 32, in early 2011, I went on a business trip, a mental health conference. For my work. I was working as the director of a community health center. And I went to Phoenix, Arizona, and ended up becoming acquainted with a man named Doug at the conference who was also attending. And we just really hit it off on a personality level. We spent a coup of days really talking and getting to know each other. And I didn't have any guy friends. I was afraid of having male friends. So to have this. This really handsome, magnetic person who was interested in me, I found myself opening up. And on the second day, I told him I was gay. And I had never told anyone since that conversation with Megan. No one. And he was cool with it, and he was gay. And we just kind of had this chemistry and this flirtation. And it's kind of a charming story in the book. Our legs touching and feeling electricity shoot through me. And we ended up kissing.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] And you're how old by this?

Chad Anderson [00:13:16] 32.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Okay, so your first.

Chad Anderson [00:13:19] My first kiss. What I consider my first kiss 32 years old.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] 32.

Chad Anderson [00:13:23] And there was an immediate healing process that began in that I experienced at 32 what other people experience at 13. This idea of pheromones and excitement and rush and very quickly the realization that, oh, my God, I don't feel broken. I don't feel broken. And that coming up for oxygen. I've been holding my breath for 20 years and now I can suddenly breathe. And it was extremely dramatic. It's really hard to describe, but I had not ever felt like a full person until that weekend.

John Dehlin [00:13:59] Yeah. What's it like for someone to be with for that type of experience of both, number one, not feeling broken and dysfunctional, but also feeling whole and being able to experience attraction and maybe even romantic love for the first time. What's it like to have to wait till you're 32? What does that do to someone to make them wait till they're 32 to be able to have that experience?

Coming Out at 32 and Its Aftermath

Chad Anderson [00:14:24] It hurt me a lot. It hurt me a lot. In my current presentation, I've been out over coming up on seven years now, people ask me, would you go back and change things? And sure, if I could, I would go back and come out at the age of 15 and create a loving, happy world for myself. That said, my sons wouldn't exist, so I wouldn't change a moment because if I had come out even six months earlier, my younger son, who I call A in the book, wouldn't exist. And he. The both of them are the light of my entire world. And so there's a great unsolvable problem there. But don't wait until you're 32 to be happy. Like, no God would expect that of anyone. And I know men in my personal life and in my office who wait until they're 60 or 70 to come out. And it just makes me hurt so much because why stay where you are in pain? So for me, it was a really dramatic shift. I come out, I come home. I mean, from the conference and the same night, Megan and I had a very large fight. The first huge fight of our entire marriage that resulted in me sleeping in the basement for the first time. And we never shared a bed again. We never kissed again. We never held hands again. There was a significant shift in our relationship. And we waited. Fast forwarding a little. We waited until the baby was born, and then we sold our home and moved to Utah and split. So part of the. Part of the funny Part of my story is I had this fundamental Mormon upbringing and moved to Utah as an ex Mormon gay guy because I'd never lived in Utah before. That had never been part of my story. So I speak the Mormon language, but I never spoke the Utah language. And the last seven years of my life have been like, what is this place? It's so bizarre. It's a weird. It's a weird place, even for a Mormon guy. It's just such a different, significant shift in my cultural experience. But it was a very rough period for a while. Part of coming out of depression means I think people who decide not to be depressed anymore think, oh, this will be easy. Now I can just be happy. And that's not how it goes when you're depressed, you're numb. Constantly. You're numb and you're miserable. So coming out of depression, I had to learn how to be happy and sad. I had to learn how to grieve. I had to learn how to process through my trauma honestly. I had to learn how to tell my story. I had to learn how to take accountability for the mistakes that I've made. That's all part of the hard work, that owning your life means. Just making a decision to lose weight doesn't mean you're thin. You got to eat right and show up at the gym. And on an emotional level and on a spiritual level, I had a lot of work to do, and it took me a long time because I came out now I'm authentic and I'm real, and I have an infant in one arm and a toddler in the other, and I'm navigating a divorce. And that was not easy. The next three years were pretty rough.

John Dehlin [00:17:29] Yeah, I bet. So can you talk about. So you came home from that event and you just told Maggie?

Chad Anderson [00:17:37] Yeah, she confronted me. I was exchanging text messages with Doug, the guy that I had kissed, and she confronted me, and then I immediately came out. But it was the same night I got home. The idea of going back in the closet was impossible.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] What can you tell us about what that's like for her now? She put her faith in marriage, in the church. And you, you were Elders Quorum president,

Chad Anderson [00:18:03] and she was pregnant.

John Dehlin [00:18:05] Yeah. Yeah.

Chad Anderson [00:18:06] For a pregnant woman to have her husband tell her, I can't imagine she's ever been through anything rougher.

John Dehlin [00:18:11] Yeah, and it's such a. You know, one of the things we try and focus on is that it's not people, it's systems. Right. And even we mentioned someone like Ty Bansfield or Josh Wheat. Or whatever. In some sense, we're all victims to a system. But what was it like for. What can you tell about a woman who's given her life to someone? She's had one kid, about to have a second, and now it's all starting to fray. How could you convey to a woman who's considering entering into a mixed orientation marriage what that might have been like for her?

Chad Anderson [00:18:48] It was devastating. Both of us went through a lengthy period of extreme pain, trauma therapy. I became suicidal briefly. I mean, we were losing everything we had built. It was devastating. Absolutely devastating. I don't know a stronger word to use there.

John Dehlin [00:19:13] Yeah, okay, so. So then you get separated, is that right? Yep. You lived in the basement for a while, right?

Chad Anderson [00:19:23] Yeah, until the baby was born. And then we moved to Utah. She moved back in with her parents. I got a little apartment and we started sharing custody of the kids. And that's been the last seven years. I mean, our lives are very different now. But. But we had. We had a lot of stuff to figure out.

Faith Transition and the End of His Marriage

John Dehlin [00:19:39] Was the unraveling of your marriage? Did unraveling of your faith precede the unraveling of your marriage? Was it by the time your. Your marriage unraveled, you had lost your faith, or did you have to go through a separate process of unraveling your faith?

Chad Anderson [00:19:56] It all was a pretty quick avalanche for me once I realized I don't have to feel broken anymore. I couldn't go back to church. I stopped wearing garments almost immediately, I realized, like, how. And I. And I had some rough stuff happen. I had some of my dearest Mormon friends who were awful to me after I came out. I got called a failure. I got called broken. I got called a rapist. I got called terrible things by people that I had that had been huge parts of my life. Family members disowning me, refusing to look at me, saying I'm not welcome in their home anymore. I mean, there was some pretty rough stuff. I had to find a completely new support system, and I had no idea what it meant to be gay. And my book's a lot about that process of learning how to date and navigate all that. But on a very spiritual level, it happened pretty quickly for me. Once I realized I don't have to be broken, I realized all of the stuff that the Mormon church has been telling me is wrong. There's the very simple caveat, and this is again, my journey. I'm not speaking for anybody else, but there's that very simple caveat where there's one scripture that says, if you know, the Book of Mormon is true, then it's all true, and nothing can be wrong. And then there's the other scripture that says, the prophets will never be allowed to lead you astray. And once I realized the things that had been told me about homosexuality were wrong, that meant it was all wrong. I mean, it was all wrong. And eventually, and it took me several years, Mormonism for me, now I'm ex Mormon. Mormonism for me now represents my heritage, my pioneer ancestry, my upbringing, even my culture in a lot of ways. But it has nothing to do with my spiritual beliefs. And I'm allowed to own that. I get to make that for me what it is. Just like everybody individually has to do that. But it wasn't difficult for me to leave the relationships. That part was hard. But not being depressed anymore, that part was easy. I was tired of being miserable.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] Yeah, that totally makes sense. So your faith unravels, your marriage unravels, and then you rebuild this new life. Here you talk in the book about some of your experiences dating as, you know, dating as a gay man. Yeah, there's a. There's a chapter in your book about threesomes. Talk about and. And let's. Let's take some time with that. A little bit more than maybe you even cover in the book. So you've been Elders Quorum president, super Mormon for a long time. All of a sudden, you've had this awakening, and now you have to start. You've got your brain wired with the law of chastity. You're brainwired with like, no, no, no, no, no. This is all evil and bad. You're brain wired with miracle forgiveness. And then all of a sudden, there's Grindr. You know what I mean?

Chad Anderson [00:22:55] Like, yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] What's that? So talk us through what that process is like of trying to date.

Chad Anderson [00:23:03] Salt Lake City has a huge gay population. Huge. We're in the top 10 per capita in the country. Like, along the lines of San Francisco, Los Angeles. We have a tremendously huge gay population. That said, most of the gay population here are active or recovering or ex Mormons. And there's a lot of people who are out and gay who really dislike themselves or who are trying to figure it out. And I tell a couple of stories in the book. I have dozens more. I even share a poem about all of my dating experiences. But I started the dating process financially wiped out because of the divorce and with two very young children. And so trying to figure all of that out and navigate was very difficult. That said, I got to have Sex, I got to cuddle and touch and feel and kiss and be with people, and it was amazing. And because I had denied myself that for so long. So to feel all of those feelings was just wonderful. Then there's all the after. I mean, anybody who's dated, we know what that's like. There's the sex was great, but I have no personality chemistry with this person, or this person turned out to be a jerk or that one doesn't like me back. So learning how to have your heart broken, learning stuff that you probably learned as a teenager to have crushes and to get rejected, I had to learn as a sexually active ex Mormon gay father. And it was a very different, different journey. So falling in and out of relationships, I fell head over heels in love with a guy who lived really far away, and it didn't work out. And the heartbreak associated with that, I mean, so that was a completely different part of the journey. But for me, it wasn't that difficult to enter that realm of life. When you're in the Mormon bubble, you think everybody's monogamous and who saved themselves for marriage, and that's not really how the world operates. So I don't have any shame about being a sexually active adult man who has a lot of honor and integrity and takes care of myself. I'm an honorable dad. I have a great career. So being sexually active is not a source of shame for me now, where for most of my life it would have been.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] But coming out of the Mormon paradigm, you've still got those voices in your head, right?

Chad Anderson [00:25:36] You know, at the beginning, probably. But again, once I accepted that I didn't believe in Mormonism anymore. That part wasn't a huge part of me. There was a lot of the old dialogue, though. What's wrong with you? What have you given up? I mean, I had a lot of healing to do, but I didn't really hate myself anymore. After coming out, it took me a long time to have my first sip of coffee and a long time to have my first alcoholic beverage. And I see a lot of Mormon guys who are gay who course overcorrect. I'm leaving Mormonism, and now I'm just gonna get drunk every night, or they develop a drug habit, or they're having lots of unprotected sex. It's very easy to go way too far in the other direction. And then there are life consequences for those things, or there can be.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] So I kind of grew up in the 80s when there was that big AIDS scare, and AIDS is still hiv. Is still an issue today. Sure. I imagine it would be terrifying dating as a gay man being worried about the health implications of STIs, STDs, maybe even at a level, perception level more severe than what a heterosexual person dating in, in the world is. Now, that's just a bias. But tell me if that's.

Chad Anderson [00:26:49] Yeah, I mean, keep in mind, when I talk about dating and sexual experiences, I'm not someone who, who is very frequently out there having sex. I don't have sex with strangers. When I do engage in sex, it's protected. I made sure I was educated and knew what was going on. So that's never been a big scare for me. On top of that, some of my closest friends, very closest friends, are people who are HIV positive and a couple who have aids. And they have very vibrant, happy, healthy relationships. Some of them are parents, they are still sexually active. So the stigma with all of that was never a really big thing for me. I just made sure I went in knowing I'm educated and self aware. But it's important to speak that language. When you grow up Mormon. You don't have any knowledge of sex education or how to protect yourself. So there's a learning process. People who are out there engaging in frequent unprotected sex are very, very much at risk. But if you're careful and if you communicate well with your partner and you are protecting yourself, there's not a lot of risk, actually.

John Dehlin [00:27:56] So you talk when you. In your chapter about threesomes, you did mention that it was common for you to find a man, maybe find him on Grindr or whatever, and he wouldn't tell you at first that he was married.

Chad Anderson [00:28:10] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:28:10] And then after a while, it became clear that you were being invited into some sort of threesome. Is that right?

Chad Anderson [00:28:17] Yeah, that's one experience that I share in the book. I'm certainly not advocating for threesomes. There's nothing wrong with threesomes. But there's a chapter called Threesome in which I talk about a particular encounter on a very PG level. For those of you that are worried about salacious details, I keep it very pg. But there is a lot of deception in the gay community. Absolutely. And I think that exists in the straight community as well. But guys who have different types of standards, guys who are very sexually motivated. I share one encounter where I went on a date with a guy who invited me back to his place and then said, oh, by the way, my partner is not home. Excuse me, we can't go to my place. My partner's there and he doesn't know about this. I mean, that's not an uncommon thing. So there are such things as open relationships or open sexual relationships where people are open and honest with each other. But there are a lot of deception and sex driven decisions in the gay community. So learning how to navigate that as an ex Mormon was a big deal. It's important to feel good about yourself and to feel who you are and to love yourself and so to be wrapped up in those types of things. I'm not sex shaming by any means. I'm a very sex positive person. But there is a lot of deception and miscommunication in the gay community and in the straight community. That's a big part of it too. For women who leave Mormonism, learning how to date men and becoming sexually active, that's a completely different set of experiences. So there's similar narratives, but men tend to be more sex driven than women. And so there's a lot of that element to the gay community. So when I hear, and I don't like the community aspect here, when I hear the Mormon community, quote unquote, who are critical of the gay community, quote unquote, they'll use things about, oh, gay people wear tight and revealing clothing and march down the street advocating for free sex with everybody. And there are people in the gay community who do that. But the gay community represents every color and shade and area of society and we don't get to share shame. People who are sexually active or who are sex positive.

John Dehlin [00:30:24] Absolutely. So. So what was it like being a gay dad who was. No, not Mormon anymore? So you were gay Mormon dad, closeted. But you weren't. There was probably wasn't a lot of time where you were a gay Mormon dad. Right, Right. So what's it like being a gay dad? And did your wife and did your wife and kids stay in the church?

Fatherhood, Partnership, and Life After Coming Out

Chad Anderson [00:30:50] So My children are precious and incredible and prolific and amazing. They are the hugest part of my life and I'm an incredible father. And I hope, reading the book, that if you get that sense, anyone who knows me personally knows how tremendously important my children are to me. They're being raised by a straight mom and a gay dad, and I share a chapter in the book. In one evening, after coming out, writing suicide notes and convincing myself at the time that it's better for my sons to have no dad than to have a gay dad. That was kind of my old programming kicking in and then the realization of the reality of that, that I was ready to take my Life in some sort of method to protect them from having to have a gay father. That's so awful. That's so awful. So I made the decision to live and be honorable. I'm currently in a very healthy, happy, loving relationship with my, with my partner Mike. We are actively involved in the kids lives. They have a gay dad who has a boyfriend and a straight mom. And they're fine. They know what gay and straight means. They know what transgender means. They are loving and accepting toward everyone. And we don't give them the message that you are gay or you are straight. We give them the message that we love you. Whoever you are, whatever you turn out to be, we love you. And so they're fine. They're fine. And I'm so scared. They wouldn't be. They're 9 and 6 now, but I just wrote a book called Gay Mormon dad and they see it on my shelf like they know what this is. So they speak this language.

John Dehlin [00:32:30] There's a point in the book where I think your son asks, so you don't like girls anymore, dad?

Chad Anderson [00:32:34] Is that right? So when my older son, he's nine now, when he was about six, he cornered me and, you know, why did you marry mom if you're gay? I get what gay is, but why did you marry a mom then?

John Dehlin [00:32:44] That's a pretty sophisticated conversation for a six year old. Right?

Chad Anderson [00:32:46] Poor boy has two parents who are therapists.

John Dehlin [00:32:49] Maggie is.

Chad Anderson [00:32:50] Maggie's a therapist also. Yeah. So he is very in tune with his feelings. But finding a narrative for that was not easy. Just saying I had to answer that. Growing up I was told one thing and I learned something else and they're just aware of what gay, straight and trans are now and they're just loving toward everyone. Maggie did leave the church a few years after I did, so she stayed active for a period of time and then made the choice to leave also for her own reasons. But we're both really healthy, active, vibrant, loving parents who are ex Mormons who have Mormon families.

John Dehlin [00:33:28] So you have a committed partner now and what's that describe the difference between having a committed partner who you happen to be attracted to and kind of want, you know, really in, instinctively, natively want to be with.

Chad Anderson [00:33:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] Versus Maggie, who you loved and who you're emotionally connected to, but it wasn't maybe the best fit.

Chad Anderson [00:33:53] The most distinctive difference is that I like myself now. Honestly, I feel like any time you are going to be in a healthy relationship, you have to love yourself and know how to take care of you first and not Just Mormons. But I know so many couples who get married young and don't really know what they're doing and then they stay married for decades and they're so unhappy for so long. And that has nothing to do with gay or straight. When you love you and you're living for you, it's so much easier to give of yourself to someone else. That said, relationships have struggles, we have conflict, we have to work it out. But having someone, and again, I really care about Maggie still, but having someone to come home to, that helps take care of me and that I help take care of. And we also have that level of physical attraction and we both really like ourselves at the same time. It's a really healthy, happy relationship. I was single for six years though, navigating parenthood and dating and career. So I was single for a really long time. But Mike and I have been together a little over a year now and it's really good. It's really good.

John Dehlin [00:35:03] So the church would teach that wickedness never was happiness, which is ironic because you were living the gospel plan and miserable and gained whatever 60 pounds and was self loathing and depressed. Now you're living maybe what they would say, the gay lifestyle. And the church would say that you should be miserable and unhappy because wickedness never was happiness. Yeah, what would you. And there may be young gay Mormons who are faithful that are listening, trying to figure out what decisions to make in their life. How would you respond to someone, let's just say a 21 year old gay Mormon who's trying to figure out what to do with their lives, but who has in their minds wickedness never was happiness.

Chad Anderson [00:35:46] I'm happy and before I wasn't. That's the simple answer. I'm really happy now.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] What if somebody says you just think you're happy, you're not really?

Chad Anderson [00:35:54] Well, you don't get to answer that question for me is what I would say to them and I can't answer.

John Dehlin [00:35:58] But there is such thing as self delusion, right? Sure. You're a therapist, you know that there are people that will say to you in the therapist chair, I'm happy, but you know, they're miserable.

Chad Anderson [00:36:07] Well, but self delusion is what I did until I was 32 years old. So I'm, I'm happy now and nobody can say that I'm not. If you knew me before and you

John Dehlin [00:36:15] knew me now, would Maggie say you're happy?

Chad Anderson [00:36:17] Oh, yeah, absolutely. And she's very much at peace. I mean her story is her story and there's Painful pieces. But she's very much at peace with who we are as parents. We're very kind and respectful toward each other. We're co raising our children. We've never had any conflict since that, since the initial divorce about me being gay or about me being ex Mormon. We're great, involved, active parents. And that's not the same story as every man who comes out, by the way. Another unique part of mine is not only did I come out while she was pregnant, but our marriage ended really quickly after I came out. I see people who hang on to that marriage for 5 years or 15 years or even 25 years where they know one partner's gay. Maybe he starts sleeping with men on the side and she consents or she doesn't consent. I mean, there's every variation of the story, but one unique part of mine is once I came out, we were finished.

John Dehlin [00:37:10] How have you maintained a positive relationship with Maggie versus it becoming like relational Armageddon where the kids are footballs in this awful battle?

Chad Anderson [00:37:20] Yeah, we've never had problems arguing over the kids. We do have problems in our relationship, but we respect each other. I'm a stand up dad. I pay my child support. I show up with the kids. They're with me constantly. We speak every day. I volunteer in their school and pick them up. You know what I mean? I didn't rush off and start a new life off by myself. I share a moment in the book early on while she was still pregnant where she says, I'm so worried that you're going to just run off and find somebody and be happy and I'm going to be left here alone. And that was a real fear for her. And that's not what happened. In fact, I was single for longer than she was. But we just, we respect each other. We put our children first, our boys come first, and ourselves. I mean, I'm a better dad when I'm taking care of me. Right. And I think every parent knows that I sacrifice for my children. And I also make sure that I'm. That I'm a really happy, involved dad. And it shows. Our kids are great. They're so good.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] What helped Maggie come around to being LGBT affirming as someone who was not only raised devout Mormon, but also might have felt betrayed by you at some point?

Chad Anderson [00:38:36] Yeah, yeah, Maggie. Maggie's biggest heartbreak was not necessarily that I came out, it's that I came out and said, I can't be married anymore. That was the really tough part for her. But even before I came out, she's always been LGBT affirming. She's always been close with my sister and her wife. We have other gay friends who were not Mormon. Maggie's always been very LGBT friendly and there's a disconnect there because again, before I was out, I was a therapist. I had gay clients and gay coworkers that I was very loving and kind toward. I just didn't see see gay as an option for me. But after coming out, I'm a better, more vibrant father, a better, more vibrant therapist, et cetera, et cetera. But for Maggie, she's always been LGBT affirming. The difficult part for her was watching her life fall apart for that period of time.

John Dehlin [00:39:24] How's she. How's she doing now?

Chad Anderson [00:39:26] Good. She's good.

John Dehlin [00:39:27] Is she found somebody?

Chad Anderson [00:39:30] I'm not going to answer that question.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] Okay, that's fine.

Chad Anderson [00:39:33] She was with someone for a period of time and is now not with that person. But she's very happy professionally involved and she's an incredible, vibrant person. I did answer that question after saying I was not going to question.

John Dehlin [00:39:48] How are you treated in Utah as a gay dad?

Chad Anderson [00:39:53] Well, that's a complex answer. I used to teach college at the University of Utah for social work courses. And the courses that I would teach often revolved around social justice or social ethics or privilege or even LGBT issues. And I could generally divide my class of social work students into thirds. There would usually be a pool of people who are very pro Mormon and very defensively Mormon. Can't hear any criticism, don't talk about my church that way. And they tended to respond somewhat negatively to me at times. I would also have a pool of students who were very anti Mormon, perhaps ex Mormon, who hate Mormons. And they just would dig their feet in strong. And I feel like Utah has a strong juxtaposition of both of those populations represented. Then there's the people in the middle, the students who just responded and were there to learn. I tend to not involve myself in situations where I'm going to be treated poorly. Life is too short for that. If somebody has something hateful to say, I say, good for you and walk away. So in my day to day life, I'm surrounded by people who love me, who care about me, because those are the people that I want in my life. That said, doing something like this, putting a book out and talking on a microphone about my life leaves me very open to criticism. People who feel like I'm too anti gay or too anti Mormon. And so I get critical notes sometimes and I can be very Very strong against the Mormon religion or certain aspects of the gay community, and everybody has their opinions. We live in a social media world where it's really easy to type really strong things and click send.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] What types of things might you say that would have someone accuse you of being anti gay when you are gay?

Chad Anderson [00:41:53] Again, There's a large gay community here of people who are often relatively ashamed of themselves. So people who say I'm not. I'm not sex positive enough, or that I'm too critical of the gay community because I've had some things about shame and self esteem to say here, or that I'm too critical of gays who are trying to be religious, et cetera. So there's gay people represent. There is no gay community except that we're all gay. Gay people represent every religion, every situation out there. We're 5 to 10% of the overall population, and that comes from every area of the population. So I get that criticism on both sides sometimes.

John Dehlin [00:42:36] Got it. Okay. Anything else you want to share about your story to conclude part two before we jump into part three, which will be a discussion of sort of contemporary issues in Mormonism related to the LGBT population?

Chad Anderson [00:42:53] Nothing that comes to mind right away. So I could work it in as needed.

John Dehlin [00:42:56] Okay.

Chad Anderson [00:42:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:57] All right. So we've concluded sort of part one and two of our story with Chad Anderson. The book is Gay Mormon Dad A Memoir. It's very well written and I think it's going to help a lot of people. It's some of the interesting things about it. The chapters sort of rotate between past and present, generally.

Chad Anderson [00:43:23] Yeah. The odd chapters start at my birth. The even chapters start at my coming out, and they both move forward chronologically.

John Dehlin [00:43:29] And then each chapter has. Has some poetry.

Chad Anderson [00:43:32] Yeah, Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:33] And that's poetry written by you, Right? Yeah. So it's a lovely book. I really recommend it. And I should have asked you at the beginning, what was your purpose of writing this book?

Chad Anderson [00:43:44] When I came out, I've always written. I've always journaled avidly. But when I came out, I came home from that trip to Phoenix and just started vomiting with words. Because my story had been so private and so shut down, I opened a blog that was private at the time. And I would just blog seven, ten times a week, different stories from my adolescence. I just started speaking out loud for the first time. That turned into a different blog eventually, and I still blog actively. But just after years of writing my story, the format for this book came into my brain. And the ultimate message is I'm healthy and Happy now. And I had to find that within me. I couldn't find that with anyone else.

John Dehlin [00:44:28] And so your goal is to help other gay men find health and happiness?

Chad Anderson [00:44:34] Sure. Well, not just that. I think people who read the book, I hope, leave inspired and speak a different version of their own stories. We all have individual. I'm fascinated constantly by the human story. If I was to read this book, I would leave it with a sense of wanting to live right now. We only have now. We only have this moment, and to live and to be happy and not waste time being miserable. So it's not just the gay community, but I would love for people to leave this book with a more compassionate understanding of what it means to grow up gay or trans and to be kinder to the people around them. Those are kinds of the messages I hope people will take away from it. It's a funny book, but it's a hard book to read. A lot of people have talked about crying a lot of the way through it. There's pieces that are pretty raw.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] Yeah, absolutely. But I love that message. I mean, maybe I actually, I think the most powerful part of the book for me was when you, you know, why don't we close? This is sort of. This is sort of repetitive a little bit, but I. I love. I love the parts of the book where you just talk about living in the now. How dangerous it was to split yourself into. To kind of suppress who you are and then to sort of discover yourself as finally being in a healthy, authentic place. Sure. So maybe, maybe read starting on 221 at the bottom and we'll close with just kind of that paragraph that talks about where you are now.

Chad Anderson [00:46:27] I'm now 39 years old, still am. And I genuinely like myself. I like the parts that are light and I like the parts that are shadow. I work on my difficulties with loving acceptance, not shame and judgment. I hold myself accountable and I have integrity. Ever since that weekend in Phoenix, I haven't allowed the puzzle pieces of myself to be broken apart again. I've learned to feel and embrace all of the colors of emotion in my life. I love and embrace myself for the person I am and the person I'm trying to become. For all those years, I believed success and happiness could only be achieved by following one specific path that I was taught as a child. I sought to conform and change myself. Not surprisingly, true happiness comes in loving me and being who I am meant to be. This is the vision I want my sons to grow up with.

John Dehlin [00:47:18] Yeah. How does it feel to read that.

Chad Anderson [00:47:21] It feels powerful and it feels real. It feels authentic.

John Dehlin [00:47:24] Yeah. Well, thank you for writing this wonderful book. I know it's going to help a lot of people. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. Rocks is a featured single on Angela Soph's upcoming album Second Wind, inspired by her struggle with the faith journey out of Orthodox religion. You can find and follow her on social media as Angela Sofbam. That's S O F F E on Spotify or AngelAsof.com.

Chad Anderson [00:48:24] Cast me your stones I will lay them back at your feet Take my head let's walk we like to throw rocks at the people who don't see the world in the way we do I don't know why we all stand in a circle and point a finger or two Tell me how can you see what is buried beneath a mountain of smiles we're all thrown in the same blue water of the unknown so leave your rocks at home. The truth is not what it seems we are told to just be believing the story has never been told and we all need someone to listen to hold our hearts is there beating with so much more than we see but we like to.

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 876

Chad Anderson [00:00:00] We like to throw rocks at the people who don't see the world in the way we do.

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. All right, so we are now going to jump right into part three of this interview. There are a lot of contemporary issues within Mormonism. There's Proposition 8. There's the, there's the November 2015 policy. There's still, you know, a lot of, there's still North Star, North Star, you know, Evergreen's dead, which you mentioned, you mentioned in your book, having some interactions with Evergreen. And I should mention we're back with Chad Anderson, who's the author of this book, Gay Mormon Dad. In the first two parts, we've talked about his experience as a gay Mormon and eventually as gay Mormon dad and then eventually as a gay dad who's no longer Mormon. Chad is a licensed clinical social worker. He works here in Salt Lake City providing clinical services both to gay LGBT individuals, but also other individuals experiencing faith crisis, healthy sexuality, sex positivity, all sorts of good work. At the end, we'll have you plug your practice. Sure, sure. But yeah, Prop 8, November policy. You know, Evergreen's dead, but Northstar is still thriving. We've got a lot of Mormons still considering celibacy. LGBT Mormons considering celibacy.

LGBT Mental Health and Suicide in Mormon Communities

Chad Anderson [00:02:22] Suicide still a huge issue.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] Triple suicide rates have tripled amongst youth in Utah over the past since 2008, which ironically is when Proposition 8 sort of started. Not that we can draw a causal connection there, but it would be weird to not at least wonder if there's some correlation. But, but then we also have Tom Christopherson's book coming out that they may be one. And then we've got now Russell, Russell M. Nelson as Prophet of the Church who has spoken out regarding the November policy. He sort of stepped extra to say that that's doctrine. And then he brings down H. Oaks into the first presidency, which, you know, Don H. Oaks has been a very vocal opponent of same sex marriage and the like. So, you know, these sorts of things have really powerful impacts on people, on individual lives, on our community, on Mormons. So what I like to do is just kind of take you through each of those things. Oh, and of course, we have Josh and Lally Weed coming out, but we still have Northstar and Ty Mansfield and other sorts of people.

Chad Anderson [00:03:38] Affirmation.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] Affirmation. Doing really interesting things. So I want to just talk about all those things.

Chad Anderson [00:03:43] Yes.

Proposition 8 and LDS Church LGBT Policies

John Dehlin [00:03:44] So let's start and let's talk about Proposition 8, and if you have any commentary on that. And then. Oh, by the way, I want to end with you talking about your work with LGBT people. Sure. And sort of what types of advice you do and don't give or counsel or experiences you have so that we can help our LGBT Mormons and former Mormons have the healthiest, happiest life possible.

Chad Anderson [00:04:07] Prior to my coming out of the closet, I threw myself in for a lot of my life into understanding Mormonism and Mormon doctrine. Upon leaving the closet, that passion of mine for history and culture has shifted to a more worldwide perspective. So I've spent a lot of time over the last seven years researching the history of gay people and trans people and American culture, everything from Watergate and McCarthyism to the AIDS crisis, just developing an understanding of this world that we live in. I very much under that Mormon bubble where I had a peripheral understanding, but it was always from a Mormon bent. That's just. That's kind of how I grew up. So coming out and learning what culture outside of Mormonism is and history outside of Mormonism has been a huge part of my development over the last seven years. I'm summing up a lot of stuff, but at the time when Proposition 8 was happening, I don't think I had a really strong reaction to it. I was an active Mormon married guy, and I just was depressed, and I thought about it as something that was happening to people far away. But upon coming out and meeting people and learning what really happened and growing to love people who are impacted by it, that gives me a very different, passionate awareness and part of the danger of Mormonism. I'm going to draw a parallel here. I feel like people who are actively Mormon are so caught up in the bubble that they see outside of it. I almost want to compare it to people who are American. When we are American, we're so caught up in, we're number one. This is the best country in the world. We speak whatever political affiliation we have, but we don't really have an outside understanding of world culture or things that go on outside of what our own views are. We only look at news sites that are part of our diatribe. We want to talk about freedom of religion and freedom of speech and the founding of our country, but we don't want to talk about the slaughter of Native Americans and slavery and women being denied the right to vote. So America comes from both of those sides, and we have to speak to all of that language. Mormonism, and this isn't a direct parallel, but Mormonism has a lot of the same. There's so much beauty in the formation of this religion. Truth and love and happiness, and we respect everybody and God loves us, and we have an eternal destiny. But there's also homophobia and hatred and racism and sexism and polygamy, and those are parts of the language. And I think as an active Mormon, I was so willing to overlook the flaws of Mormonism and just embrace the parts that made me feel comfortable. And leaving Mormonism has given me a wider view. Again, I still consider Mormonism to be my heritage, my culture, just not my religion. Proposition 8 was so dangerous and damaging. When you look at Mormon history with homosexuality, people being excommunicated and put into church tribunals and disciplinary councils and publicly exposed for being gay, and Mormon influence in politics and the shock treatments at byu, and you can cure it. Just try hard and marry women and you're going to be fine. And all of those messages that were delivered, they're delivered by men who people believe speak for God. So when you have a man who is saying these words, you have an entire community of millions of people who view their words as law, as inspired. So when a letter is read over the pulpit that says, gay marriage is evil, give your money, give your time, and fight against this gay marriage, that trickles down to the individual people who are hurting and struggling. It causes people like me at the time to disown his sister when she comes out. It causes people like Stuart Matus to go to the church and commit suicide publicly. One soul lost is too many. And the consequences of the church's actions with Proposition 8 have affected hundreds of thousands of people. Some who didn't make it, some who doubled down and disowned their kids or kicked them out, some who entered marriages and started families because they didn't see homosexuality as an option. I could speak on this for a long time, but the consequences, again, are devastating. It hurts people when you deliver over the pulpit words that discriminate against other people. It hurts people because it causes the individual families who belong to a religion of love to then hate. And it's not okay.

John Dehlin [00:09:03] Absolutely. Okay. So let's fast forward to the November 2015 policy.

Chad Anderson [00:09:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] What was that like for you when you heard about it and what, you know, what have you seen be the results of that policy?

Chad Anderson [00:09:17] Yeah, I have a whole chapter in my book about this. At that time, I was an ex Mormon gay dad working and dating in the gay Mormon community. And that policy came out and they made it about kids. And I was furious. It hit me on such a visceral level. Oh, I was mad. And I've had people tell me that I didn't have a right to be mad because I wasn't Mormon anymore, but you bet I have a right to be mad. They made a policy decision in which they said that gay couples are apostates. People who are legally married as gay are apostates. They don't call rapists apostates. They didn't call my stepfather, who screamed at my mother on the floor, an apostate. But me, for being gay and happy with somebody is an apostate. That juxtaposition made me so viscerally furious. Then they said that the kids had to disown their parents. They're not allowed to be included. They're not allowed to belong. My kids, I'm ex Mormon, so as their mom, but my family and her family are still Mormon. So it creates then a power differential. Do my children have less value than their Mormon cousins? Are they not allowed to play with their Mormon friends? What are the cultural trickle downs? Do kids in my neighborhood, and I live in a very Mormon neighborhood, do kids in my neighborhood not get to play with my kids now because their Mormon parents say, oh, that's the gay couple. Don't go over there. It creates these cultural divides in my family and in my community. I watched depression rates skyrocket. I watched suicides happen. And this came from a non compassionate, ugly space. And I wrote a very public blog that I share in my book in which I accuse the Mormon leaders of putting blood directly on their hands. All it would take for them is to say, we love our gay members. You belong here. We're gonna figure it out as we go, but you belong. But to call us apostates and to tell my children that they don't belong, that took it so much farther for me. I. Oh, oh, I'm still, it's years later and I'm still so palpably mad about that. They haven't changed anything. There's been no message of love or compassion since then.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Yeah. So there's been a lot. There's been a lot. Well, how do you, how do you respond to The Josh and Lollyweed sort of announcement. My. I imagine that five years ago you may have heard about that.

Chad Anderson [00:11:44] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:11:45] Talk about what the impact was then, what you think and feel about them coming out now.

Chad Anderson [00:11:52] Josh and Lali Weed in the Mormon community have become accidental public figures. He put a blog out in which he talked about his story and suddenly it was being shared. All of these times and people are using them as an example of what things could and should be. So Josh and Lily, I've met both of them a few times. They're lovely people. Their parents, their people. Josh and I are in the same field of work. They're kind and compassionate and they're on their own journey. I don't think they ever intended to be the public spokesman of anything. I do think the Mansfields, Ty Mansfield and his wife, I think, have put themselves out there as public figures. But Josh and Lali, I don't think meant to do that. I think it just kind of happened. So I view them with a lot of compassion. I think they were figuring themselves out just like I was figuring myself out. But suddenly they became the spokespeople in the Mormon community for mixed orientation marriage. Parents used that to abuse their gay kids over it. Gay people like myself, I wasn't doing this, but people like me used that to, oh, maybe I should marry a woman, then maybe I should go ahead and get into a mixed orientation marriage. And so I think it did a lot of damage, but they didn't mean for that to happen. So Josh coming out now and the way that he did it and the care and the compassion that he and Lale put behind their public messages were so beautifully done and I wish them so much happiness. They talk about they deserve to be with people who make them happy. They deserve to be comfortable in their own skins. And they do. And we speak that same language. So I celebrate their decision. And the. The public nature of all of this has had to have been intensely comfortable for both of them.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] Absolutely. Yeah. Some people are. I think most people that have read what Josh and Lolly have written recently are just find them to be courageous and heroic.

Chad Anderson [00:13:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] And lovely. That's always been my experience as well. Some are angry, though.

Chad Anderson [00:13:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:01] Do you understand the anger?

Chad Anderson [00:14:03] Yeah. If you read Josh's words and you thought, oh, I can be gay and Mormon or celibate and Mormon, or mixed orientation marriage and Mormon, I don't think that Josh is responsible for that. I think he wrote his truth and his story and people took that for themselves. So to be angry about that if you took hope from their story and then it turned out to be hopeless for you, I think that's an individual experience. Josh is not Dallin Oaks. He's not standing across a pulpit saying gay marriages are counterfeit marriages or, you know, whatever the latest quote is. I think Josh is just a guy. He's just a guy. So people are hurt by that. And I get it. I get it. But I think it's an individual pain.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] Yeah, absolutely.

Chad Anderson [00:14:51] Josh doesn't have the sphere of influence that a Mormon apostle does.

John Dehlin [00:14:55] Right, right. So I'm going to give a disclaimer. I've had Tom Kristofferson on Mormon stories. I was inspired by my interview with him. I find him to be very authentic, very wise, very grounded individual. I find his beliefs to be very sincere. And I've gotten a lot of criticism for having Tom Kristofferson on specifically because of the concern that his story will be weaponized and used by believing Mormons to sort of push and force young LGBT people to follow his path of celibacy or being single or being in a mixed orientation marriage. I have a quick response to that that I just want to make very public. Number one, all throughout Tom's book, he makes it really clear that he should never be viewed as a role model. Certainly his mixed orientation marriage can't be held up as exemplary because it didn't last but a year and he declares it a failure. He's willing to condemn mixed. Well, he's willing to be very candid that mixed orientation marriages are fraught. He did that on my podcast. He's not a champion for mixed orientation marriages. He's not a champion for celibacy. He acknowledges that in some sense he's able to be celibate because it's later in life and because that's sort of a value that he's balancing with his devotion to the church. But he's also very clear in my podcast, LGBT people, if anybody pressures you to follow my path, you show them this podcast where I tell them not to do that. But what I see him trying to do is strategically, you know, we know through the Family Acceptance Project in Caitlin Ryan's work, that an LGBT youth is eight times more likely to attempt suicide if they're rejected by their family. And so he's willing to openly, you know, he's also willing to openly say that Prop 8 was wrong and a mistake, that the November policy is wrong and is a mistake. And he's willing to hold up his parents who allowed him and his partner to cohabitate or to stay together, sleep in the same bed in their home, and they were just loved and embraced. He's willing to sort of put that out there as the role model as what families of LGBT post Mormons should, you know, the way they should behave. So in that sense, he's, I view it as if you really care about LGBT suicides, then you care about orthodox Mormon families accepting their LGBT youth. And who else can convey that message but someone who's faithful, who's in the church, and who's specifically calling on lgbt, on faithful Mormon families to not reject but accept their LGBT youth? And so in that sense, how can we do anything other than celebrate Tom Kristofferson for at least doing his part to reach faithful families? Because we know that that is going to be the number one sort of button that can reduce LGBT Mormon youth suicide. So that's my bias, that's my preamble. That's why I defend Tom Kristofferson and his work. Now, I want to hear you. You're in lcsw. You, you also did a mixed orientation marriage. You work a lot with LGBT Mormons and post Mormons. Can you talk about his book from your perspective?

Perspectives on Mixed-Orientation Relationships and Church Approaches

Chad Anderson [00:18:43] Yeah, absolutely. I saw your interview with Tom, beautifully done. And I read his book also, and it's beautifully done. I think Tom as a person is really lovely and he's very careful in both his book and in the interview to say, this is my story, nobody else's. And one thing I really love about it is he talks about having been in a long term gay relationship in which he was very happy and fulfilled. It was a good relationship. And eventually he, for personal reasons made the decision to leave that relationship and then return to his faith community where he's now acting as a celibate Mormon. Right? So I think that his journey is an individual journey. He describes growing up with loving family support. When he came out many years ago, it was we love you. He and his partner were well accepted by their family. So I think his Mormon experience has been very unique in that many gay Mormons don't have those experiences. So I think his decision is really positive for him. The danger comes in and this is where I hear it from the other sides, on a wider level, on a policy level, on a cultural level, when we are delivering a message that gay people are broken straight people, that they're second class citizens, that they don't have a place in the kingdom of heaven, when we say you have to marry the opposite sex or you have to be celibate, and those are the only options. That is absolutely unacceptable. And that's where the suicidality and the personal shame and the depression and the anxiety come from. And that's systemic not just for Mormonism, but also for Americans for Christian culture. Mormons are unique though in that we have these living men who say they speak directly for God. And when they are the ones delivering the message, we then assume that that message comes from God. So Tom Kristofferson has a unique position in, in that he has some clout because his brother is an apostle. And when we have someone from that caliber saying, I am choosing celibacy and I want to tell my story to people, we then have people on both sides. And I'm going to use these terms loosely again. Mormon community, gay community. We have Mormons who say, see celibacy as an option. I'm going to pressure now my child, or I'm going to put pressure on myself to never be happy, to never find relationships. That's a horrible way to live. And research shows that there is so much suicidality and depression in relation to those decisions. On the flip side, we have people in the gay community, quote, unquote, who are very critical of people who make decisions that are against popular culture. Gay people who say, you can't be Republican and gay, or you can't be a Mormon and gay, or a clergy and gay. You can't be a celibate Mormon guy and be gay. And they criticize, they throw these people out in a way as outcasts, in a very similar way to what Mormons do with people who choose to actively be gay. Choose. So I think that there's a dangerous diatribe that happens on both sides of the fence in that we don't want to include people who don't look like us. There's an ethnocentric response on both sides of the fence. The difference though is when Mormons reject, people enter years long relationships with themselves and with others around them in which they don't like themselves. I didn't come out till 32. I lost 20 years of my life unhappy and depressed despite my quote, unquote accomplishments because of those messages that were delivered. It dawned on me and I mentioned this in my book. It dawned on me recently, just a few years ago, that at 8 years old, my childhood hero was Abinadi. And for those of you who don't know the story of Abinadi, he was an old man who was called to preach repentance to people and they burned him at the stake for it. My childhood hero was a scriptural story about a man being burned to death for sacrificing himself. That's twisted. That's weird. And just the dawning of that, like, the realization of, oh, man, that's what I idolized as a child. Literally let yourself burn to death for the greater good. That's not okay. When we're delivering those messages to an entire population of people, it's unacceptable, whether it's on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation or gender identity.

John Dehlin [00:23:15] So as you review Tom's book, as someone who has left the church, who no longer believer, but who probably still very much cares about LGBT Mormons, you know, the pain and suffering that goes on LGBT suicides, are you able to say whether you feel like it makes a net positive or net negative contribution to, you know, as an influence, to suicide, to LGBT acceptance in the church, to all that stuff?

Chad Anderson [00:23:44] You know, ultimately, I think it's going to be the. There's a certain level of cynicism here. I think it's the thing that's being talked about right now, and in another couple months, something else will be talked about. I think that's the nature of media and sourceology nowadays. I do think the book is very well written, and I think that Tom is a lovely person, but it's a very individual journey that he took. So I do think that there is going to be fallout and damage from families who use that book. Much like Proposition 8 or other things along the way. They use that book to say, you should be celibate or you should not be gay. People who feel like I have to choose between being lonely for the rest of my life or I have to marry someone of the opposite sex, otherwise I don't get eternal salvation. That's dangerous because both of those paths are very, very likely, like 90% plus to result in depression and extreme unhappiness. And that's not okay, because suicide and depression and broken relationships are the result.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] But can you also see the intended audience of the book, which is faithful LDS Church members who read the book and come off saying, wow, if D. Todd and Tom's parents can treat Tom and his partner with love and acceptance, then maybe I will too.

Chad Anderson [00:25:09] Right? And that's the message I hope people take when I treat my family and my loved ones with love and compassion, then they get to be raised to be happy, healthy adults. That's the message I hope is there.

John Dehlin [00:25:20] Do you think the book delivers that message effectively to the believing parents?

Chad Anderson [00:25:25] I do think it does. I think a Lot of the book, honestly, though, is trying to use Mormon scriptures and Mormon conference talks to speak to them, to convince Mormons that you should love everybody, even if they're gay. And that should be self evident already. Again, it's 2018, so that's valuable in that we have a unique voice. We have a gay man who's the brother of an apostle sharing his journey along the way. I love that part. So everything in my life is yin and yang, light and shadow. So within myself in the book, I think there's beautiful pieces, but I also think there's some really dangerous pieces that can be dangerous.

John Dehlin [00:26:03] They can be used dangerously.

Chad Anderson [00:26:05] Yes. Yeah, unintentionally. Much like Josh Weed's public post about I'm gay and I love my wife.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] Right, right. Okay. And that's, that's almost true about anything you do publicly. I mean, someone might say. Could someone say your book could be used in that way?

Chad Anderson [00:26:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:26:21] Okay, so you're saying that's true about any. Anytime you make some effort to do something publicly, there's going to be people that, that might use it, you know, in a way that could cause harm.

Chad Anderson [00:26:32] Absolutely. The, the difference here being Tom's position as the relative of an apostle. I think that gives him an additional clout in the morning.

John Dehlin [00:26:42] It cuts both ways because in the one sense, people might be more willing to be loving and accepting of their child because of that clout. Right?

Chad Anderson [00:26:50] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:26:52] But then also it can be used in a way to pressure people to do things they shouldn't because of that cloud.

Chad Anderson [00:26:57] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:26:58] It kind of goes both ways. Yeah. What do you think about. So did it do anything in your heart or mind to see President Monson pass away, to have Russell M. Nelson ascend as prophet and to have, you know, Uchtdorf sort of bumped out of the First Presidency, and, and then Dallin

Chad Anderson [00:27:20] H. Oaks put in, and, and again, I'll speak widely, and this may be unpopular, but I don't see these men as inspired leaders in my current space. But I grew up seeing them that way. I see them as really respectful, prominent community members, successful businessmen, loving family members. But at this point, These men are 85 and 93, and they're carrying with them the principles of their childhood, their upbringings. I feel like a lot of these men are still dwelling emotionally and spiritually in 1950s America when it was wrong to be gay. That was the message of their childhood. Homosexuality was equated with pedophilia with abominable behavior. So I'm, I'm critical in that I know, and I won't name names here, but there are direct Mormon apostles who have gay family members that they are not kind and loving toward. And they stand up from the pulpit and give policy from God's mouth, quote unquote on gay issues. And I think it's hateful. I think it's hateful. Elder Uchtdorf, for many in the gay community, seems to represent a really kind, compassionate voice. So to remove him and replace him with the current living apostle who seems most vocally against gay people sends a pretty strong message. And again, I don't mean to criticize these as individual men, but organizationally there's a lot wrong with that because we have people who then feel unsafe in their own families, in their own wards, in their own communities.

John Dehlin [00:29:08] So some people are concerned that maybe the proclamation of the family might be canonized. Other people are really fearful about what other changes might be afoot with Nelson and Oakes at the helm. Do you have any thoughts or predictions or fears?

Chad Anderson [00:29:28] The proclamation of the family I think did a lot of damage at the time. I think canonizing it just reminds everybody of how much damage was done. It's not new. I think people already view it as canon. I mean, I could count hundreds of Mormon homes where the proclamation of the family is hanging on the wall next to the picture of Jes Jesus that's right there in their homes. So many Mormon people, it's trendy to hang it on your wall and the messages of you are straight and you were born in the body you were meant to be in. That does so much damage to the gay and the transgender communities. It's hurtful. So I think it's just more of the same. I don't expect much from Mormon leaders at this point. On a personal level, I see the damage that happens in the way I phrase it in my book. And the timing seems to be a little different now. But back around the November 2015 policy decision, I compare the Mormon leaders relationship with the gay community to my own relationship with my stepfather as an adolescent. He would get very violent and loud and angry and then he'd go real quiet for a couple months. Everything would just be normal in the house and maybe we can forget the past. And then two months would go by and he'd get real loud and angry again. And that's how the Mormon relationship with the gay community felt to me for a long time. There'd be something really awful and hateful said across the pulpit and I'd see the shockwaves in the community and then it would go quiet for a little while until the next thing was said. There's almost a ptsd. You're waiting for the next abusive event to take place. Those do seem to be happening less frequently. There is change. The church doesn't seem to be saying that gay people are broken outwardly any longer or that it's curable. They seem to admit that being born gay or trans is something they don't understand. They seem to be pushing toward mixed orientation marriage slightly less. But now the messages are your apostates. If you get married, you need to be celibate your whole life, and that's a whole different kind of damage. It's not loving, and I know people don't like to say this, but it's homophobic and it's cruel and we don't tolerate that in our society any longer. But we seem to tolerate it within the church and try to find excuses for it.

John Dehlin [00:31:49] Right. So when you do you ever get faithful LGBT clients?

Advice for LGBT Mormons and Reparative Therapy

Chad Anderson [00:31:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:31:59] How do you.

Chad Anderson [00:32:00] Meaning active. Active in their Mormon wards who are lgbt?

John Dehlin [00:32:03] Yes. How do you counsel them? How do you navigate, on the one hand, your concerns that the church might be toxic or damaging to them if they stay in it, but your allegiance as a mental health professional to the client's values, not yours, and not imposing your agenda on your clients. What do you say to LGBT youth and adults who are believing and trying to make the church work?

Chad Anderson [00:32:30] Most of my clients reach out to me already knowing my story. They know that I'm an ex Mormon gay dad. So a lot of them that reach out to me understand that that's part of my narrative. That said, I don't ever use that against my clients. Every client comes in with their own story and I meet them where they are and I help them figure out who they want to be and what they're working toward. So for some people, it's working toward a more active, vibrant, healthy, robust temple experience. For others, it's should I marry this woman? Or hey, I'm feeling suicidal and I'm broke and I don't know what to do. I could give a dozen client examples. And again, they're all cut from the same cloth, but they're individual stories. There's the mother who says, I'm thinking about kicking my daughter out because she just came out as gay and I won't tolerate it. There's the man who says, I have a full time boyfriend on the side and I don't know how to tell my wife and kids about them. There's the man who Says, I was arrested in a public park for having sex, but I'm a bishop in my local ward. I don't know how this is going to come crashing down in my world, what that means. There's the woman who says, I think I'm gay. I've come out to a few people, they reacted really negatively. So I'm considering just not being gay anymore. There's the young man who just came off of his mission and I'm using man because that's the pronoun he uses saying, I think I'm a woman on the inside. I spent my entire two year mission picturing myself as the wife of my companions and that was the only way I could stay sane. Do you think I'm a girl? I mean, I could use so many examples. But the commonality here is we have people who feel separated from their community, people who feel they have to navigate something impenetrable in order to reason. My beliefs say this, but my life says this. That's the commonality.

John Dehlin [00:34:27] And so, and so, you know, I imagine sometimes you'd want to say, get out, run away, you know, the church isn't true. Here's CES letter. Like, do whatever you, you know, that you might want to do whatever you can to take their faiths away from them. So they won't want to stay in a church that could be harmful to them. Sure.

Chad Anderson [00:34:51] I don't feel like I come in with that preconceived notion. On a personal level, I certainly have a bias in that direction and I can own that. But my job is to help people discover where they want to be and move them toward the goals that they are setting. And you know that as a therapist, like, what are you here to work on and how do we get you there? So this is a completely non gay issue. When I, when I have a man who comes in and he says, I have a wife and I love her and I have a girlfriend on the side and I love her and I don't know which path to choose. My job is to say, okay, well, you can either choose your wife or choose your girlfriend, or keep doing what you're doing by lying to both of them. Which path is going to work best for you? And let's explore what those look like. I'm not telling him to leave his wife or to stop seeing his girlfriend. I'm helping him figure out what path he wants to be on. Does that make sense? And some people come in with impossible situations. The guy that I mentioned, I'm a bishop, but I just got arrested for public sex. That's an impossible situation to face. It's easier now in 2018 than it was in 1980. But it's a very, it's a very tricky world out there. People who are keeping secrets, it hurts. It hurts families.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] It sure does. So you, you counsel them, but you ultimately allow them to make their own decisions. But it's tricky, right?

Chad Anderson [00:36:07] Of course, yeah. But again, they know my story generally coming in. They know that I'm not Mormon, so I speak the Mormon language and I've learned to speak the Utah language. Those are different things.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] Yeah, for sure. So what can you know? Let's just say there's a. Let's just say there's a podcast listener again. BYU, Idaho, 21 year old gay man returned from his mission. Thought it would all go away. It hasn't. Trying to consider between celibacy, mixed orientation, marriage and excommunication, basically, because those are the three options. What would you say to him?

Chad Anderson [00:36:45] The world is so much bigger than what you're feeling right now. Honestly. I would sit and talk to him about options. How do you feel? What are you going through? What are you afraid of? And then we look at what the potential options are. I'm not going to come in and say, oh, you just have to be celibate your whole life. That's the message that Mormons are giving. I'm not going to say, oh, you just need to go have sex with a guy and then you'll figure it out. That's, that's, I'm not going to give him a particular path. We're going to talk about how he feels and what is next. And it requires a lot of hard work. When we become spiritually out of shape or emotionally out of shape. It takes a lot of work to get in shape. And coming out of the closet is a big deal. So that's a lot to navigate. One of the beautiful messages from Tom Kristofferson's book is, I am gay. I love myself. I've had a really happy life with a happy family, and here's where I'm finding my peace now. I mean, that's the message he's trying to send overall. And if that's a beautiful message, so were Tom Kristofferson my client, we would talk about that. How do you feel? What does this mean for you? And we explore that. There's no, oh, no, you have to leave Mormonism because that's the only way to be happy. That's not true. But telling our children, you Must be straight. You must be. Not transgender. You must be Mormon. You must be celibate. That does damage when we give that line in the sand. This is what God says. Otherwise, you're an apostate. You're evil. That's not okay. That's when it becomes abusive.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] So Evergreen's gone, but North Star is still surviving. I don't know if there are other. And there's also affirmation. Can you talk about your impressions of North Star, the good and the bad or the dangerous and the healthy? Yeah, and. And affirmation as well, I think.

Chad Anderson [00:38:33] I think North Star and affirmation both do a really beautiful job of working really hard within their religious and cultural constructs to create a safe, open space for LGBT youth and. And adults. I do think that some of the messages that they share are biased toward Mormonism and conforming toward Mormonism. So it's a weird space to say, like, we want you to be safe here. We love everyone, and we follow church standards, so we expect you to be celibate or married. Right. So there's a weird bias that takes place there. And so there's a lot of people who are very vocally critical of those spaces. I think they're really healthy spaces in a lot of regards. But I do think that the bias toward religiosity can be dangerous. I don't participate much with them on a personal level now. When I first came out, I did, but now I find more safety in separation. But it's nice as an LGBT youth or adult to have a space in which you can share with other people how you're feeling. Everywhere else in your life, you've been shut off, turned away, shut down. You can't speak. You're not safe here. So to have a space to share that is invaluable for the healing process. So I think it's a. I think it's a yin yang thing there also, in that there's a lot of good that's done, but there can be damage.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] What are the things that we've talked about with North Star? Some. And I just need your checking to see whether this is still what's going on or not. Number one is that Ty Mansfield and others are involved in these journey into manhood, or at least they have in the past. These journey into manhood sort of events where you where through North Star, these sort of reparative therapy like events are promoted where you go off into, you know, the desert or somewhere remote with a bunch of other gay men. You're taught that the reason why you're gay is because you know you didn't have the right relationship with your dad or your mom, you didn't have healthy relationships with men, the right levels of masculinity. And so through these journey to manhood sorts of events, you can reclaim your masculinity. You can repair these broken, defective forms of attachment, either with other men or with your parents. And that through that, you can get to a place of healing. Do you have a sense that those things are still going on? And if so, what's your critique of them as a mental health professional? Then we'll talk to a couple other things about North Star.

Chad Anderson [00:41:21] I can't connect Journey into Manhood or Reparative therapy directly to Northstar or Affirmation. I don't have any lines that I can draw there. But speaking specifically to reparative therapy and specifically about Journey into Manhood, those are dangerous and unhealthy environments. If we look at the, I don't know, nutrition community and I say, I have this new amazing diet, Just starve yourself for six days and eat on the seventh and everything's gonna be great. You're gonna get so thin in no time. That's not okay. It does long term physical, psychological damage. That's what reparative therapy is like. They brand it as healthy, but it does consequential, horrible damage to those who participate. And it creates a format in which people can hurt other people. From abuse standpoint, when you are charging people money to participate in something that says you are wrong and here's how to make yourself right, it's absolutely unacceptable and unethical on every level. I'm speaking very strongly with those words because everyone I know who has attended any of those has been hurt as a result.

John Dehlin [00:42:36] And do you have a sense that those events are still being held? Journey into Manhood, et cetera?

Chad Anderson [00:42:40] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] With Time Mansfield being involved, I can't

Chad Anderson [00:42:43] draw a correlation between Time ansf, but the Journey into Manhood weekends and things like those weekends are still taking place in Utah and other places. It's become uncustomary to call it reparative therapy anymore. Now we call it like change orientation therapy or there's all these different local organizations that that's what they're out to do. Bring us your gay children or your or your gay self and we will help you change. And every accredited organization out there on a psychological professional level has said these are wrong. They're not. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Okay. In addition, we have, we've heard over the years these reports that North Star part of, you know, there are these conferences that are set up where people hold themselves up as models of mixed orientation marriage or models for celibacy. But then you hear about these nights where mixed orientation married couples will get together in someone's home. The wives will all be on one floor of the home talking about commiserating, whatever it is they do, about celebrating, whatever they do about what it's like to be married to a gay man. And then all the gay men will go to a separate place in the home and cuddle or connect physically. Reportedly not, you know, any sex or inappropriate sort of things that would violate the law of chastity. But the idea is that these men would, these married men who are gay would get the emotional, physical, their needs met in a way that would allow them to still thrive in their mixed orientation marriages because they had this channel, this funnel for their homosexual, their needs to, to have physical intimacy with other gay men. Have you heard about these?

Chad Anderson [00:44:39] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] Do you have a sense that they're still going on?

Chad Anderson [00:44:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:44:41] And do you have a sense of whether they're good or bad or healthy right now?

Chad Anderson [00:44:45] Again, it's, I'm going to use a yin yang approach here. Again, the healthy parts are it's really wonderful to have a support group both for the straight spouses and the gay men or gay women or trans individuals. It's nice to have people to share with. When you are feeling silenced and like nobody understands you, it feels wonderful. If you've been sexually assaulted, it's lovely to sit in a group of people and process your experience. If you're going through a divorce, it's lovely to sit with people who are going through divorces and you can talk about it. It's nice to join with others in a support group format. That's a really healthy, proven method. Again, when we enter it with the bias of we want to help you become straighter by this or we're going to help your marriage be healthier by this. There are some unhealthy underlying messages to those things, but it's really valuable. Speaking as a man who didn't feel touched until I was 32, I was never part of one of these cuddle circles. But for me at that time, as a 30 year old, being touched by another man who had not experienced that, that would have been a really powerful emotional experience. I do think that that would have made me long for more. However, I don't think it would have made the desire go away. I think it would have just stoked the fires hotter. So I think there's a weird message that develops from if you cuddle with other men or if you're able to meet these sexual needs through light physical contact. I don't think that that's a realistic message to send. And I do think there's a gender bias there as well. We can help the men get their needs met so that the women can be more okay. And I don't like the message that that sends. So I think that there's some really valuable pieces and some parts that are pretty painful, but those do happen still.

Chad Anderson [00:46:34] Still.

Chad Anderson [00:46:34] And it also becomes a place for gay men to meet other gay men or for gay women to meet other gay women. And the hormones speak very strongly. So there's some of those events from Evergreen on down that then become used for. Here's a pool of sexual partners for me to be involved with secretly. And I'm not saying that's. That. That's the case in every event. But there's certainly. That's certainly a. An unintended result. Is it. It leads to cheating on the side sometimes.

John Dehlin [00:47:06] What. What. You know, were you ever involved with affirmation? And do you have perceptions about what role affirmation is or isn't playing in 2018?

Affirmation, Church Resources, and Calls for Change

Chad Anderson [00:47:16] Yeah, I. So after coming out, I attended several different affirmation event, spoke at a couple. I think it's nice. I think that they are giving voice again in a place of inclusion to people who are accustomed to feeling disenfranchised. So I think there's a lot of value there. But the same answer in that when we enter it with the bias that we want to help you be a better Mormon, that there can be some dangerous consequences of that. But providing a space for LGBT believing people, LGBT members to commiserate and to talk and to heal, I think there's a lot of value there for both affirmation and North Star. Honestly, I think that there's a lot of positive consequences of those. In my own journey as a Mormon gay guy, I was not out to anyone, really. I treated reaching out for help. I would create fake identities and join like a gay message board so nobody could possibly find out who I was just so I could talk to other people. You know what I mean? It was a very different experience for me. And I was in Northern Idaho during my entire marriage. And there's no affirmation. At the time, at least there was no North Star. There was no Evergreen. So any. Any support I found was online. But I ordered books from Evergreen, and the messages in those books did Damage to me, they talked about, you're not really gay. You just have to try harder. It was the same message with kinder words. You can cure your gay if you just try hard enough. And it. And it did more damage to me.

John Dehlin [00:48:42] Got it. James writes. He's referring to the Journey to Manhood camps. I have friends of mine that did those camps and still ended up divorcing their wives and dating men after they finally realized they were gay.

Chad Anderson [00:48:55] Sure, cuddling men in the woods is not going to make you more straight. There's no right or wrong about that. But again, the physical contact, the healing piece for them is really good. But I know people during Journey into Manhood events and other events who have been taken advantage of by the professionals there who then use their power and influence to be predators. And I know men who've been abused or taken advantage of in those situations. And it's not okay.

John Dehlin [00:49:30] All right, tell us what you think about the LDS Church's Mormon and gays website. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it yin yang?

Chad Anderson [00:49:39] Yeah, it's yin yang always. I think it's a. I think it's. I think it's healthy. I think it gives voice to people who need to see that stuff. I think I look at it a lot of, like, the church's acknowledgment that there has been racism and polygamy. They're making more public statements and owning some of those things. I think that's a really strong step in the right direction. However, I don't think it's a place that you're going to find much more than some comforting messages. It doesn't have a section of gay affirmative therapists for gay people to go reach out to to try to get help. You know what I mean? It just says we acknowledge gay people and it's complex. That's basically the message from the website. So being acknowledged is much better than being ignored, but it's not enough.

John Dehlin [00:50:29] Right. So what does the LDS Church need to do to make things right, in your view?

Chad Anderson [00:50:40] It's the difference between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau. For me, for those that know those figures, denying there's any problems and digging our heels in like our current president does, does not help people. It isolates people and makes them feel damaged and forgotten. When you have someone like Justin Trudeau and watch his speeches, we're sorry for what's gone on in the past. We love you. We reach out. We don't want any more mistakes to happen again, we embrace you. Let me march in the Pride parade with you at your side and be with you and support you. There's such a huge difference between those. There are a lot of individual Mormons out there who are doing it right. They love gay members in their congregation. They support gay marriage. They support their gay loved ones. And in today's day and age, I think it's really hard to find even one family that doesn't have at least one person who is gay. Whether it's a cousin or a closeted uncle or a nephew, there's usually someone who is gay. And there's a lot of people doing it right. And I tell those stories in my book too. So many people were loving and kind and consistent. Just last Halloween, my boyfriend and I took my two children to the I Live in holiday, to the Mormon Halloween block party. And we held hands. I had my arm around him. It was clear that we were gay. And everyone there, welcome. We are happy to see you here. Oh, these are your kids. How cute. There was no question that we were welcome and involved. We did it as part of the neighborhood, and a lot of the neighborhood happens to be Mormon. And we felt loved and embraced. And this is an area of town where there's street names after. It's like down the road from Zarahemla and Abinadi streets like, this is Mormondom. But we were loved and accepted and embraced. I've had other experiences where you get dirty looks and people who are really hateful and unkind to the point of asking you to leave and can you not show affection in front of us? And that's not okay. Embrace people, love people. Don't make it about their sexuality. Just create a space for people who are loved. And there's so many Mormons doing it right. But the Mormon Church has a long way to go. You can't call somebody an apostate and then say you're not homophobic,

John Dehlin [00:52:52] Right? So part of it would be rescind the November 2015 policy. Part of it would be to not continue to do things like Proposition 8. Part of it might be to apologize for the way that people have been treated and to begin speaking and more affirming, you know, words to LGBT identities.

Chad Anderson [00:53:18] Right? We love and embrace everyone. You are welcome here. That sign that hangs that says visitors welcome. They mean it, right?

John Dehlin [00:53:27] But I imagine that in the church's calculus, they're thinking, you know, we've got statements from most apostles and, and church presidents from the mid-50s till recently saying that, you know, acting in any way following, you know, same sex sexual desire is sinful. I imagine they. They feel that if they were to all of a sudden now be affirming and say that it's not sinful, that that a same sex, committed, loving relationship is okay, they're going to be sending messages to the members that they, number one, get it wrong on important issues, and then, number two, that they're just sort of buckling to prevailing societal trends. So in some sense, are they kind of in a corner? How can they change and not undermine their own authority using.

Chad Anderson [00:54:22] Using New Testament terms? And this is a strong statement, but current active, true blue Mormons represent the Sadducees and the Pharisees to me more than they represent the message of Christ. Christ stepped away from people and embraced people. We love you. Let him who is out without sin cast the first stone. He reached out to women and to those of ill repute, and he welcomed them with open arms. And meanwhile, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were grumbling and mumbling and complaining over in the corners about how this isn't how we've done things. So if you want to embrace a Christlike, loving message, embrace the people who need it the most, the refugee, the lgbt, the people who have been hurt, and give them a place and give them a voice. Make them feel welcome at your tables. That's the way to be Christlike to me. And again, there's a lot of Mormon people doing that right. But there's a lot of messages coming from the top down that you don't belong, you're not welcome here. Try harder. Be different. Change. Look more like me. Look more like the straight white guy who plans on having many wives in heaven. Then you can belong. And I don't want to be a part of that. On a personal level, I embrace people who do want to be a part of it. And again, it's an individual journey, but I think it's very hard to feel loved and belong by people who tell you you're an apostate.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] But how do they change without ruining the church? How do they make changes to accommodate LGBT people without wrecking the church?

Chad Anderson [00:55:56] The Church has made mighty changes in the past. They've changed policies on polygamy. They've changed text in the Book of Mormon. They changed massive. The manifesto. Is that what it's called? Allowing blacks to have the priesthood? But those policies still stay there. There's still not one black member of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles. There's still not women that are getting involved on higher levels. So change is happening. But it's also stayed the same in a lot of ways. If you can change those things, however, you can work on changing this. You can allow gay people. I don't know what that means for Mormon policy and Mormon doctrine. And frankly, in a very real way. And again, strong statement. But I don't. I don't care. I care about. I'm making up names here. I care about John Smith, who wrote suicide last night, suicide notes last night, and may not make it until tomorrow. I care about the young man who hung himself in his closet and his mom who had to walk in and find him. And now she's my client because she can't get over the heartbreak. I care about the people who are being impacted by these decisions, who are wasting decades of their precious short lives hating themselves. Those are the things I care about. The Mormon doctrinal piece, that's not for me to sort out, but I will call out when people are being told they don't belong.

About the Book and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [00:57:15] I love it. All right, well, the book is Gay Mormon Dad. How do people buy it?

Chad Anderson [00:57:23] It's only available on Amazon at this time. I self published, so it's an Amazon link if you search for Gay Mormon Dad. Can I tell the story about the COVID of the book really quickly?

John Dehlin [00:57:31] Yeah, sure.

Chad Anderson [00:57:32] So the COVID of the book is Three Life Cars. A couple of years ago, my sons and I sat down to play the board game Life in which you spin a spinner and you're required to get married and have children during the course of that. So we changed rule. You don't have to get married and you can have kids if you want. So we each chose our own color. So I chose the green car and I put a husband and my two sons in the car. And my older son chose the pink car. He chose a wife, two daughters, and a son in the back, even though it's the pink car. And then my little 6 year old chose the blue car and he said, I don't ever want to get married and have children, but my Aunt sue, who's a tomboy, can ride in the backseat. So I use that as the image of the book. Just this idea that we can create our own families, our own realities. We can be who we are and be happy and all drive in cars next to each other. So the only place that's available right now is on Amazon. But that could change in the future.

John Dehlin [00:58:34] All right, what if somebody wants to seek out your professional services? How do they find you?

Chad Anderson [00:58:39] Facebook. I have a Facebook page for my business. It's Chad Andersonlcsw. Email or phone are a good way. Can I say my phone number on.

John Dehlin [00:58:50] Yeah.

Chad Anderson [00:58:50] So my business number is 801-631-4536. So 801-631-45360. So if you would like support, I'm happy to help. We can certainly talk. And if I'm not the right fit for you, I'm happy to help you get lined up with someone who might be. There's a whole panel of therapists in in the Salt Lake community who are gay, affirmative, who don't come in with a preconceived notion, but they love you for who you are. Not trying to change you, but help you be a better version of you. And there's that. That group is called the LGBTQ Psychoaffirmative Therapist Guild of Utah, which I think you're also part of.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] Yeah.

Chad Anderson [00:59:25] So if you, if you go to that website, you can find a whole list of therapists who are going to help you find your path and be where you are. Life is too short to be sad in the wrong ways. Don't be depressed. Like if you're sad, let's learn how to be sad. But don't waste your time being miserable. It's so much nicer to be happy. Simply put, I love it.

John Dehlin [00:59:43] So the book is Gay Mormon Dad Chad Anderson, thank you so much for joining us on Mormon Stories, telling your story. Good luck with the book.

Chad Anderson [00:59:51] It's been my honor and thank you John, for all of you do for this community and for giving people voice who so badly need to be heard.

John Dehlin [00:59:59] You're welcome. My pleasure. It's an honor. I want to thank everyone who's joined us today on Facebook Live. Your comments and questions were great. I want to thank everyone who supports Mormon Stories or the Open Stories Foundation. Your donations make all this possible. Please continue to donate or if you enjoy this programming but don't donate, please go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button. 1025, $100 a month, whatever you can afford. Keeps us alive. Your donations are tax deductible in the United States. We're transparent in our finances. We have a staff that we need to keep the podcasts and our programs alive. So please do support us. Also, follow us on Instagram @MormonStories, on Twitter ormonStories. And then please, as I mentioned at the beginning, please like the Mormon Stories podcast page on Facebook, please give us a positive review. We have occasionally mean spirited people who aren't genuine listeners of the podcast but just want to malign us and they give us one star ratings and it really harms our rating. So the more positive ratings we have, the more we can drown out the haters. If people sincerely listen to the podcast and don't like it and have criticisms and want to rate us however they rate us, that's fine. It's just when mean spirited people who don't really pay attention are just trying to harm us. So your positive reviews help let people know that you value what we do. Also, please go to itunes, log in and find Mormon Stories podcast and give us favorable ratings on itunes. It really does make a big difference. And then share. If you find this episode was valuable, other episodes are valuable. Please share them on your Facebook wall, on Instagram, on Twitter, social media, through email, however you want to do it, even word of mouth, tell friends about it. All that stuff helps, helps keep us alive and keep us thriving. All right, thanks again Chad.

Chad Anderson [01:01:58] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:01:59] Thanks everybody. Take care. We'll join Hope you'll join us again soon for another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Please take care. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. Rocks is a featured single on Angela Soph's upcoming album Second Wind, inspired by her struggle with the faith journey out of Orthodox religion. You can find and follow her on social media at Angela Sofbam that's S O F F E on Spotify or AngelAsof.com.

Chad Anderson [01:02:58] So judge me, cast me o stones I will lay them back in at your feet Take my hand let's walk among we like to throw rocks at the people who don't see the world in the way we do I don't know why we all stand in a circle and point a finger or two Tell me how can you see what is buried beneath a mountain of smiles we're all thrown in the same blue water of the unknown so leave your rocks at home. The truth is not what what it seems we are told to just be believing the story has never been told and we all need someone to listen to hold our hearts is there breeding with soul more than we see but we like to throw.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.