Welcome and Introduction to the Live Event

Guest [00:00:00] 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 on the donate button on the right side of the page under support. 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.

Kate Kelly [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom

Guest [00:00:43] Lead

Kate Kelly [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home. My name is Kate Kelly. You may have heard of me. I'm an infamous Mormon now, and I'm super excited about this. I've had this idea of doing a Mormon Stories live storytelling event for, like, several years, and it just never worked out. And I'm in town for.

Guest 2 [00:01:12] You can't hear?

Kate Kelly [00:01:12] Is that what you're saying? Okay. Can you hear now? Okay, so I'm in town for work, and we decided to do Mormon Stories event. Live event. Exciting. So we're having several storytellers tonight. A really talented crew, if I do say so myself, who all of whom are Mormon or former Mormon, except for with the glaring and loving exception of Sarah Burlingham, who is a Nevermo, but very, very involved in the Mormon community. So, yeah, I'm excited. Who's excited? Like a Mormon. Wild and raucous polite clap. I love it. We're not used to clapping. So, yeah, we're gonna get some great stories. We're gonna have some. Some highs, some lows, emotional lows.

Guest 3 [00:02:11] Don't worry.

Kate Kelly [00:02:13] And I'm really, really excited. So I. I think. Is Stephen here?

Guest 2 [00:02:20] Steven.

Kate Kelly [00:02:21] Okay. Stephen was going to be our first storyteller, but looks like he's running a little late. So I'm gonna pull, like, you know, in sacrament meeting, when they, like, they' low on testimonies and they just randomly call on someone, they're like, hey, you come up and give your testimony. And you're like, no. Okay, so I'm gonna randomly call on a selected storyteller to go first. Sean, how do you feel about starting us off?

Sean Carter [00:02:50] Yes.

Kate Kelly [00:02:52] Yes.

John Turner [00:02:52] Okay.

Kate Kelly [00:02:58] This is Shawn Carter. He is amazing for many reasons. He's a law graduate, Harvard Law graduate. But then when I found out later that he actually went from being a Harvard Law graduate to being a law humorist, I was like, this guy really knows what's going on. He's also a recent convert to Mormonism, but got baptized in 2011 and is on the board of Ordained Women. Give it up for Sean.

Sean Carter [00:03:28] So as kicks in, I'll just start. My name is Shawn Carter. I am a Mormon. It's hard for me to say that. I don't say that out loud very often. It's not just because I'm ashamed of it, that's largely it. But it's harder for me than it would be for some of you. You didn't notice this and the lighting is kind of weird in here. I'm black. Don't tell anybody. I got a temple recommend coming up.

Being Black in the Mormon Church

Guest [00:03:54] Okay?

Sean Carter [00:03:55] So hear me out. As a black person, when you tell people you're a Mormon, people have follow up question like how long have you been a Mormon? How long have you been black? Did you hear about that whole 78 thing? It's a hard concept to have. And so I'm kind of excited now because I finally get to sort of. It took me four years to really figure out how this whole black and Mormon thing happened. And I want to share it with you. I didn't always want to be a Mormon. And it actually started even back in 2001. I was not anything. And I was in Las Vegas. I'm sorry, I was in Maui. I was in Maui on a business trip, a corporate sales reward trip. Now here's the thing is I wasn't a corporate salesperson. I was from the legal department. They picked me to come because I was the only guy who wasn't going to tell on them when we came back. So I wake up at the crack of noon one day and I'm wearing like, you know, scuba flipper one shoe and cowboy boot. I'm the own boots. And I look at the tv, I turn the TV on and I go in by the TV and I come across tbn, not M. Tbn, Trinity Broadcast Network. That's not my favorite channel at the time, but the time there is a black preacher on with an orange suit. Now if you wear an orange suit, I got to listen, I got to stop. I don't know if many people wear orange suits. I've got to stop. And he's up there talking above Jesus. Now I'm not so impressed with that. But here's what I'm impressed with. He's good at his job. People are yelling and screaming. At some point, people start running out and throwing money on the altar. Now I'm kind of intrigued by this because at that time I realized I'm probably going to need a new job and this might be a good job again. If they throw money at you, I can do this. And so I go out and I buy every one of his tapes. Now, there's some young people here, so let me explain this to you. There used to be this thing called cassette tapes. It was weird because it was like a physical object. Hear me out. And you could not store an infinite amount of media on it. You only had, like, an hour on either side. And it had moving parts. So when you pull the cassette out, very often times the entire ribbon would come out with it. And you'd spend an hour pulling that out, and then two hours with a pencil putting it back in. Look it up on YouTube. It's gotta be video, I promise you. And I'm listening to his tapes back and forth, and I'm filtering out the Jesus part, or so I think. And I fall in love with this concept, this biblical Jesus. And I said, I gotta have this. And so I go to the only person in my company who was sober on the Hawaii trip, and with no priesthood authority at all, he baptized me into the Protestant Church. All you need to be as a Protestant is to stand there, in this case, while smoking a cigarette outside at break, and say the sinner's prayer. And you're in the club. And he says to me, okay, now you gotta get your family and find a church. Ooh, I got a problem here. I don't know how I can break this whole Christian thing to my wife. See, we're very secular educated, intelligent, sophisticated people. And when I tell her I now believe in this Jesus, she's not gonna allow me to, like, keep the checkbook anymore. And she's gonna start talking to me very loudly and slowly. Hi, Sean, I got your pants from the dry cleaners. They go on the outside of your underwear, that kind of stuff, right? But eventually, I come clean one night, and for 10 years, I try to find a church that she'd be interested in, and I cannot find her spiritual G spot. Pray for me. It's like the other. But I cannot. I just keep hitting, this is not it. This is not it. And finally, we get so desperate that I tried the Mormon Church. That's how desperate we got, right? I said, let's just try this. I go to, by the way, unannounced. I show up at my local ward the first Sunday of January, 2011. You'll find this hard to believe, but they know immediately I'm new. I think it's the spirit of discernment that you give to the priesthood. You know, who you get later. And so they find out who I am. And you're not a missionary. What missionary leader is? We don't get a lot of walk ins. Maybe your ward. We don't get a lot of walk ins or our ward. So he like just kicks his wife in the head. Get all of these shut off, this here. And they're very good to me. And what I do is very intelligently and just on accident, I sit the missionary sisters on my wife and they can do the job that no one else in Christianity could do. Because here's the thing about Mormons. As you know, we don't call first. They just stop by. See, if you call my wife, she's not going to let you come because our house usually looks like we've been robbed. We have four sons. So if you come by, you know, there's stuff strewn on the floor and there's furniture tipped over, two or three kids tied up in a corner. It's a home invasion every day of the week. It's not here, though. And so they come by and, you know, wade through our messy house. And my wife just falls in love with the assistant missionaries. At the same time, I'm doing my research on the Internet to see, you know, how crazy this is. And I come across Mormon stories and all the other stuff. And I'm not so worried about, you know, some of the stuff you see out there. I knew wasn't a problem. All right, I knew you didn't have horns. I knew that because actually I would test it out when I go to church. Every time I saw a little boy, I'd be like, hey, sport, how you doing? All right.

Guest [00:09:34] You good? You good?

Sean Carter [00:09:36] I knew you weren't having sex orgies in the temple. And the reason I knew that is because there are only 15 million of you. I ought to be a member since 85 if that was the case. I knew that wasn't the issue. I knew some of the other stuff, but I was having trouble with some of the milk before creepy stuff, some of the later stuff you get. People were telling me things like, you know, about like the three Nephi time, I was like, I could picture these three ZZ Top guys, you know, driving down the desert and giving people rides and feeling, you know, healing broken ankles like Mr. Miyagi and karate Kid, right? And I was like, this is weird to me. And then they told me that they were gonna pick out my underwear. Oh, yeah, I'm going there. I'm going there. Hear me out. See, African Americans understand in our community, it's really Not a good thing. When other people pick out your underwear, it usually has a number on it. I'm not kidding. The greatest indignity you can have in my community is for someone to pick out your underwear for you. And I got a whole catalog. I'm like, oh Lord, I want to walk out. But here's what got me and why I'm partly here. Today about a few days before we're supposed to get baptized and I'm really hemming and hawing and my wife wakes me up one morning with the strangest thing she's ever said to me. She says, shawn, wake up. Someone is bleeding. Someone. She said, I don't know. Just see this trail of blood. So we go through our house on this, you know, blood treasure hunt and we are walking down the steps and sure enough, there's a trip to blood drips of blood. It follows it to the refrigerator, it goes into the refrigerator, up the wall of the refrigerator, into the meat section, down again, back out to the other side of the hall. We walk down, down, down the hall and we get to my 16 year old son's room. He's autistic and his feet, the bottom of his feet are red. And we look at him and he's got covers over his head. I pull back the covers. Somehow in the middle of the night, he's cut himself and he's cut about seven stitches into his hand. And we of course knew what any responsible people would do. We freak out. You know, it's one of those Benny Hinn Hill, ask a non Mormon friend of yours. It was a show Benny Hill in the head. It was a weird thing. But we're running around to each other back and forth and finally by panicking and I take him to the emergency room and Renee now has to go clean up this crime scene.

Stephen Puente [00:12:10] She is.

Sean Carter [00:12:11] So she calls one of the sisters who was supposed to come and take her. One of their sort of pre, you know, your. What is it? You know, your pre Mormon final lunch. And she said, I can't go. We've got this situation. Now here's the thing that got me. This sister did what any good Christian would do. I've been around Christianity for 10 years. This is what you do when you hear that someone's had a personal tragedy. You say, you know what? I'm so sorry. Hey, you know what, girl? I'm praying for you. If there's anything you can do, let me know. And then you hang up before they can tell you. I know how this works. And she does that part and hangs up. And 20 minutes later, Renee gets a knock on her front door. It's this sister. She shows up with a mop and says, I'll do low, you do high. And I said, you know what? If the church produces that type of people, there has to be something about it. And I would deal with the crazy stuff and do that, but there's going to be something about this tradition that can produce that type of thing. And that is why I'm a Mormon. And I say these things in the name of Kate Kelly.

Guest 3 [00:13:30] Amazing.

Kate Kelly [00:13:31] Can we get another round of applause for that? John is amazing. If you're not Mormon and you're in the crowd, be ready for some weird jokes. But everyone likes the Book of Mormon musical, so also, we're getting wild and crazy here. Got my shoulder showing. I know some of you are judging me.

Guest 2 [00:13:58] It's okay.

Kate Kelly [00:14:00] Sometimes I still judge people. I'm like, oh, the harlot over there in the cap sleeves. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's me too.

Sean Carter [00:14:08] Oh, well.

Kate Kelly [00:14:11] So amazing. See, we can be faith promoting and apostate at the same time. I love about Sean. So our next storyteller is Joe Wagner. Jill is someone I met at byu. We were roommates. We've had many fond adventures together. Jill's family comes from the Mexican colonies in northern Mexico, the Mormon colonies in northern Mexico. And Jill is a champion storyteller from dc.

Growing Up Between Cultures and the Church

Guest 2 [00:14:50] Hello.

Sean Carter [00:14:51] Before I start, if anyone's listening to this on the podcast, please do not forward it to my parents. You'll understand very soon why that is.

John Turner [00:14:58] All right.

Sean Carter [00:14:58] I come from one of those Mormon families where you weren't allowed to watch the Simpsons. My parents were really strict. Even from Mormon parents. They could give Kim Jong Un a run for his money. When it comes to censorship and surveillance, we were not allowed to say anything. My mom made us call poofs, Stinkies, gas, Wendy's, Pepsi poison. To this day, she still spells out S E X in front of my little sister. A mother of four. My dad had an Achilles heel and Kate kind of took the wind out of my sails because I was going to say the line is kind of weird in here. You don't notice I'm half Mexican, but my ancestors were polygamous on the lam, so we are half Mexican. And my dad grew up in Mexico City. And as anybody who's ever been the interpreter for their own parent teacher conference knows, your parents lack of cultural information can be your greatest ally. This really hit home when our neighbors, the Chows, moved to our Neighborhood from Vietnam. Now it's during the time of the melting pot. Everybody wanted to assimilate, become American as quickly as possible. And the Chows were no exception. They were waiting for the birth of their first son in the New World. And they thought, what's the most American thing we can name our son? What will give him instant accept. Instant acceptance.

John Turner [00:16:29] There we go.

Sean Carter [00:16:30] Instant acceptance in any social circle in America. And that's how, and this is even his name on his driver's license. Rambo Chow came to me. Now it works. Rambo was one of the most popular kids in our neighborhood. Everybody loved Rambo. Loved him, in fact, so much that he got the greatest token of acceptance any American kid can get. A vulgar nickname. Now, I myself have had to tell people not to call me Jill Joe. I don't know how Ramboners felt about his kidnapping. But I did know one thing. It was the antithesis of anything my dad would like. So we were really careful not to say it at home. Until one day my brother Ty messed up. He said, dad, going to ram Boners. It was like time stood still. All of our minds flashed back to the incident a week before when my dad had destroyed our Happy Gilmore VHS because he didn't want that kind of filth in our home. We weren't ready for another bloodbath. But after a couple minutes, we noticed with glee. Dad had no idea what the word boner meant. We could say it as much as we want. And we did.

Sean Carter [00:17:53] Grand boner.

Sean Carter [00:17:54] Grand boner.

John Turner [00:17:56] Grand boner.

Sean Carter [00:17:57] It just felt so good. But the thrill started to wear off. We realized there was only one thing that could bring it back if we got our dad to say it. We knew it wouldn't be easy, but

John Turner [00:18:12] we knew it would be worth it.

Sean Carter [00:18:15] So we started planning. All in the name of our fallen friend, Happy Gilmore. We enrolled our dad in a class of Ramboner 101 immediately. Dad, this tuna casserole tastes delicious. The chips are so crunchy. Don't you think Ramboner would like it? Did you hear what Ramboner said at school today? Classic Ramboner copy. Sabidon de esta Ramboner. But it wasn't working. It was almost impossible. We were getting discouraged. It seemed like it was impossible to break through the force field of our father's virtue because people always noticed there was just something different about him. But as I've learned on Pinterest, sometimes the night is the darkest.

Guest 2 [00:19:07] Before the dawn

Sean Carter [00:19:12] came the day of the basketball championship. We all loaded into the van. My dad was really serious about this basketball tournament. He noticed somebody was missing. He looked around, panicked in his eyes.

Kate Kelly [00:19:27] What?

Sean Carter [00:19:27] There's only five of you? Who's missing? And I saw my opportunity. Dad.

Kate Kelly [00:19:34] I don't know.

Guest 3 [00:19:35] Who could it be?

Sean Carter [00:19:39] That's when the culmination of all of our hopes and dreams. A moment even greater than the one in which we beat Super Mario Bros. 3.

Kate Kelly [00:19:47] 3.

John Turner [00:19:49] Where's Ra Boner?

Sean Carter [00:19:52] I screamed.

John Turner [00:19:55] Thank you.

Kate Kelly [00:20:06] The next amazing storyteller is going to be Troy Williams. Troy, as many things. He's an activist in Utah. Long time longtime radio show host on KRCL in Salt Lake City, currently, most recently, he's executive director at Equality Utah and has recently been arrested at the state capitol. So welcome Troy Williams.

A Family Reunion and Letting Go of Ashes

Guest 5 [00:20:41] I always wanted to perform on Broadway. So it's the day after my parents 50th wedding anniversary and my family is gathered at the Oregon coast. And it's rainy and it's cold and it's miserable. And with a typical American family, we have my libertarian, almost Tea Party loving sister, media leftist gay activist, my devout Mormon father. And I'm standing with a cardboard box with my mother's remains. And we've come together to say our final goodbyes. And we brought an Elvis Presley impersonator along with us as well. So you may wonder, how did Elvis Presley get to my mother's funeral? Well, she was a mega fan. Now most Mormon families, they adorn their homes with LDS kitsch. With the proclamation of the family temple figurines. My mother adorned my house with everything cheap she could find from Graceland. She had Elvis LPs, VHS tapes, we had everything. And her possibly most loved beloved item was a portrait of young, hot Elvis Presley on genuine black velvet. And as a kid I was embarrassed by this. I thought that it was, you know, like tacky, unrefined, lower class. I felt that it might even possibly be idolatrous. So nevertheless, as my mother's breast cancer was rapidly, she was rapidly declining, she started planning her celebration of life. And she made the decision not to have her funeral at the chapel, but she actually wanted it to be at her senior community center where her and my dad went. And I thought initially I was like, wow, this is so great because I'm inactive, my sister's inactive, and she really just wants us to be really inclusive. She wants us to be there and feel comfortable. But no, she wanted Elvis Presley to perform at her funeral and she knew the bishop would never go for that. So this is pretty, this is very soon, maybe like less than A year after Prop 8 had happened, and I have to return home and be with my Mormon relatives. I'm not really even out to my aunts and uncles. I don't know how they're going to take me. It's that kind of raw, awkward time. My dad and my mom, this divide, this culture war between the gay community and the LDS Church had really divided my family. And when my mom died, we weren't close, and my father and I are not close. He cannot discuss the fact that he has a gay son. And when the subject comes up, he gets awkward and uncomfortable, and he changes the subject. He just can't deal with it. Now. It's hard to have a gay son when you're a Mormon. But my dad has a gay activist son who sometimes last year gets arrested at the Capitol, but this year stood in a press conference with elder L. Tom Perry and, you know, passed historic LGBT rights legislation. My dad can't figure me out, right? My sister is great. I love her. We don't talk about politics. She's a libertarian. She's like, troy, you got to read Ron Paul. I'm like, you gotta read Howard Zinn. We never connect. And so we're there. The family starts coming in, my extended relatives, and it's awkward, but Elvis arrives from Orem. Okay, he was a friend of my family's, and he came out just to perform, and he's dressed like the King the moment he arrives, all right? And he's like the older, fatter variety of the omens. And so the great buffer, though, is that instead of talking about the gay son, everyone gets to talk about Elvis. And so all day long, we're hearing Elvis trivia. He was a black belt in karate. He had shot over 30 movies, but he had never won an Oscar. And fat Elvis is telling me all these stories, and he's like, the Osmonds gave Elvis a copy of the Book of Mormon, and he treasured it his entire life. But then, this is Mormon Elvis. Kind of like, he senses my awkwardness, and so he kind of brings me to the side, and he says, troy. He goes, I want to tell you something about myself. My family rejected me because of my career path. My wife's father didn't want her to marry me because he didn't believe I could make it as an Elvis. But, Troy, this is something I've always known is inside of me. This is who I'm supposed to be. And he nods and he winks, and we're connecting. We're bonding. So we do go to the chapel, though, for the lunch. And I walk in and it's awkward. I'm angry at the church still. And I'm feeling all this uncomfortable. The walls feel so much smaller to me than when I was a kid. And there's a relief society and they're making my family lunch. And it's awesome. And I like, remember how good Mormon people can be and that selflessness and that love. And I'm just walking through the halls going, what is this? Gays versus Mormons? Mormons versus gays? Why does it have to be like this? And wishing that things were different. So that night, this is it. It's the celebration of life. And the ward folks are coming to the senior center and we're there and Elvis arrives and he's setting everything up. And unbeknownst to everybody, he sets up a merchandise table and starts selling his CDs at my mom's funeral. Ten bucks a piece. And so I pick up one and I like walk over this, I pick up one. And the COVID of it, it is a picture of Elvis in the celestial kingdom, kneeling before the Mormon Jesus. And it was like Mormon hymns done like Elvis, right? And I start like having this panic attack. I'm like, this can't be happening. This is gotta be fine. This is lower class. This is tacky. And I'm like, stop. Elvis Presley is selling CDs at my mom's funeral.

Sean Carter [00:27:19] That's awesome.

Guest 5 [00:27:24] And he starts performing and you know, Suspicious Minds, Love Me Tender, all of the classics. And on the sisters in my ward. Like they're all there, the old ones, and they're grabbing the scarves and it's awesome. And I could just feel my disembodied mom there on the front row dancing to the Jailhouse rock. So the next day we go. Her celebration of life is all my parents 50th anniversary and we drove to the coast, we brought Elvis. And it's cold and it's wet and it's raining. And I'm there with the box and we're going out. We're in Florence and we're going out in the jetty and it's slippery and wet. My dad slips and falls. I pick him up. I drop my mom and I'm just this cold and I'm just miserable. I'm like, is this how we're going to say goodbye? Is this how this is going to happen? It's not dignified. It's not right. It doesn't feel good. I'm just upset. I take the box and I crawl down the rocks to the ocean. And I peel back the cardboard and I open up the plastic and I feel my numb fingers. My mom's ashes. And everything stops. The rain stops. The clouds literally part. And sun comes through. And there's this deep presence of peace. And I let my mom's ashes go on the water that she loves. Like a river flows through the sea Darling, don't you know Some things are meant to be? And I feel this deep peace. And it stays with me. And we travel back to Eugene, and the next morning, my dad takes me to the Eugene airport, and he tells me that he fears the future alone. And little do we know that four months later, he'll be remarried to another Mormon woman, because that's what they do. But he hands me my suitcase and he says, troy, I'm proud of the person you've become. He can't say, I'm proud that you're gay, but I'm proud of who you've become as a catch. All that stands in for the unspeakable. And I think that possibly the last gift that my mom gave me was a deep and abiding acceptance of all of the things that I cannot change. My sister's politics, my homophobic dad, my homophobic church, fat Elvis. And I realized that I can't help falling in love with all of them.

Kate Kelly [00:30:12] Wonderful story. Post Mormon's the best, man. Yeah, we're awesome. I also love Elvis. When I was at byu, I took a road trip to Graceland, and. And I don't know if any. Maybe this is just, like, the Mormon in me. I just, like, love conspiracy theories. Like, love to believe really weird things that no one else thinks are true. I went to Graceland. I loved Elvis. But when I got there, I took the tour, and everyone there. I don't know if this is everyone, or maybe it was just my tour guide is, like, 100% convinced that Elvis is still alive and lives at Graceland. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Praise the Lord. I was like, yeah, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. And, like, as I'm going on the tour, I'm, like, looking in the attic. I'm, like, looking around. I'm, like, convinced to this day that Elvis is still alive. Wonderful, wonderful, amazing story. So the next storyteller currently is showing her feminist credibility by having purple hair. I gave this storyteller a haircut at Feminist Mormon Girls Camp last year, which is not just for girls. Sarah Burlingham came up to me and said, you're a lawyer. You must Have a steady hand. I was like, those two are not the same. This is a terrible idea. Bad, bad. Very bad. She had three feet of hair. I. I cut it, and it ended up 3 inches longer on one side. But as you will see, she can rock it. Sarah is also a perma blogger at Feminist Mormon Housewives, although she has never been Mormon. So, like, all of the benefits and none of the burdens. Jk. Lol. So please welcome Sarah Burlingham.

Kate Kelly, Purple Hair, and Finding Feminism

Guest 6 [00:32:19] So I'm new at this. I can't go off book. I'm too nervous. But you know who's not nervous as Kate Kelly? She had never cut hair before, and by the end of it, she was saying legitimately, I'm just gonna style it a little bit. Something I like to do what you like to do. You've literally never done it before.

Kate Kelly [00:32:45] I have uncommon confidence.

Guest 6 [00:32:48] I chose correctly and maybe tackily. I called it the X haircut. Too soon.

The Internet, Poetry, and Leaving the Faith

Kate Kelly [00:33:01] All right.

Guest 6 [00:33:02] The first thing the Internet ever gave me was a poem, and that's the story I want to tell you. A boy named sue grew up hard, but I grew up really weird. I'm in good company tonight. I have braces and headgear, and my family were Baha'. Is. Any Baha'. Is. Oh, good. Ashford of Islam. And that was not a popular choice in Winnemucca, Nevada, or any of the other hodunk towns that we lived in. So I grew up feeling really alienated and weird. So I read a lot. I read a lot, a lot. I read voraciously. And one of my favorite was Madeleine l'. Engle. And Madeleine Lingle wrote this book called and Both Were Young, which sounds really pervy to me now as an adult, but as an adolescent, I thought it was really dreamy. The flyleaf of the book, she had a little snippet of a Byron poem, and I wanted to read the rest of that poem. And there was literally no way for me to find it, because in the tiny little towns that I lived in with their libraries, there was no complete works of Lord Byron. So I would just ask around. And finally, when I was 14, we were living in this little town called Bishop, which is in the Sierra Nevadas, and its claim to fame is it hosts the original Mule chip bingo. The original, Like Bakersfield says that there's the original, but it's not, and nobody believes that anyway. I don't know if you guys do that, if it's come to New York yet, but it's gonna be great. You sign numbers, and then whichever number the mule defecates on you win. It's pretty urbane. But we did have this really great librarian, Bishop. And this librarian, you know, knew I was looking for this Byron poem. And so one day she was like, sarah, come with me. And I got to go to the very back of the library that says librarians only. And she had this special little tray that had these pink slips of paper in it that said, you know, patron request, colon, search engine. And she said, write down your PC of the poem on here. I was like, okay. So I wrote it down, and she, like, went into the back room where I was not allowed to follow her because there was a computer in it. And you can't just let people touch those. Like, it would not have been more mysterious and, like, imbued with magic than if she would have, like, put the little pink paper on a silver tray and just, like, levitated into a cave. Because she came back five minutes later, and she was like, is this what you were looking for? And she had the whole second canto of Byron's the Dream Songs.

Guest 5 [00:36:03] What?

Guest 6 [00:36:04] How did she do that? So it was like. I mean, it was super magic, but it also really happened off stage. So I did not think that that was anything that I could ever do. And the poem, in case anybody wants to know, that I carried around, was. And both were young or I saw two beings standing upon a hill, a gentle hill. And both were young and one was beautiful. It was really corny. For years, I'd been like, if only I could find that. So it was pure magic. And if you fast forward three years, I was a teenage girl, and I was on fire because I found myself in the completely unique situation of loving a boy who did not love me in return. And that was the first time that had ever happened on this planet. So I needed to leave the continent I was on. And I really had tried, like, less extreme forms of therapy than total expatriation. I started hitchhiking alone up and down the Central Coast. So wise. But I had to stop when I took a ride that I really did want to say no to, and I knew I should have said no to, but I was really tired. I'd spent the night on a park bench the night before, and I wanted to go home, and I still needed to write a paper for AP English, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. So I took the ride. And he just talked a ceaseless stream of total nonsense. He was in his early 30s, this was the early 1990s, and he wouldn't stop telling Me how he had saved his entire platoon in Vietnam when he threw his body on a grenade. And I really wanted to say, no, you didn't.

John Turner [00:38:00] That's plot.

Guest 6 [00:38:02] Full Metal Jacket, I know that. But I couldn't. So I stayed silent. And I looked out the window as we dropped into the Mojave Desert, the place that I called home then. And I knew that I needed to leave. So I dropped out of high school. If I'm feeling pretentious, I say I graduated early. If I feel like I want, like a little bit of street cred, I say I dropped out of high school.

Kate Kelly [00:38:27] I don't know, high school.

Guest 6 [00:38:29] I got a one way ticket to Germany and I bumped around Europe. Figured out that being a hero treasurer was a thing and I could do it. I found an apartment, I found a rad girlfriend, and I found an endless amount of booze and fun. Not the missionaries, it seems like it. Right? I was in London, and I did my best to bring my own probably misunderstood brand of riot grrrl feminism to the Emerald Isles until they asked me to leave. And it was one of my rare $10aminute phone calls home that my brother asked me if I had access to a library.

Kate Kelly [00:39:09] And I did.

Guest 6 [00:39:09] I had a library card for the South Kensington Library where I would legitimately check out books. But I also really liked to troll the objectivist that met there, these Ayn Rand accolades. And I recently, you know, as a teenage girl, had been really fond of her. And then when I became disabused of that, I thought it was fun to go to their meetings and say really provocative questions like, so, like, how rapey is too rapey? Because they did kind of use it as a dating service too. And I was like. My counselor felt like this was a really spectacularly bad idea. Like, and I'm gonna butcher this now. She was from Australia. She would say lime because her butt nickname for me was lame, because I overused the word lame a lot because I was from Southern California. She was like, lime, why don't you just leave them alone to go to the park? But somebody was wrong, and so I wanted to tell them about it. And if this was a play, that would be all the foreshadowing. You would need to know that I was right before the Internet. I won't even tell him about it. But my brother asked me if I had access to a computer so that we could chat on something he was calling the World Wide Web. And I was like, holy, he's such a cute dork. He's a Physics major at UC Davis. He thinks that like everybody's into his geek stuff. And so I really confidently and patiently explained to him that like, we don't have that in London. And he very patiently said, it's the world. Why, what do they do? And I just ignored him. I just thought, oh, we don't. That's not a thing. I rambled back to the pub where my friends were teasing me and making fun of the fact that I was going to be going back to the states as an 18 year old had left when I was 17 and I would be back to adolescence. There would be no more going to the pub with friends when I got back stateside. No more pubs, no more girlfriends, no more Roberto, the shy Italian guy who lived down the hall. He'd asked to accompany my girlfriend to this drag queen ball called Kinky Gurling. And as soon as we got there, we lost him. And we thought, oh no, he's really shy. Like this is bad news. And then the next time we saw him, he was on stage, he was walking on this Runway and he had a leash and there was a man in leather and jeans clawing on all fours. And Roberto was walking him and he's. He looked ecstatic. So he was fine. He was fine. But I had to return home to the Mojave Desert and I missed my big queer bohemian community. But I fell in love with this little kid and then I fell in love with his dad. We got married in our own way. Gay marriage isn't legal yet, so our own way didn't involve any paperwork work, and moved to wyoming. And in 2006, Bus magazine, this third wave feminist magazine that every issue has the one handed read, a little pure feminist erotica in the back and articles about feminist Mormon housewives. Every issue doesn't have articles about feminist women. So it's just that one big love had just come out. So they had Chloe Sevigny on the COVID and they also had an article called Desperate Mormon Housewives.

Kate Kelly [00:42:50] I was like, what?

Sean Carter [00:42:52] I want to know more about that.

Guest 6 [00:42:54] And the funny thing is I had two girlfriends who lived on different sides of the country. And they called me and they were like, did you read that article about feminist Mormon housewives and bust?

Guest 3 [00:43:03] I was like, yes, I did, and

Guest 6 [00:43:06] I really want to talk about it. I said, oh man, when I read that, I thought of you, which is super weird. Like everything I'm bust is feminist. So that's not like a qualifier. And I'm not a Mormon and I'm not a housewife, but they were like, oh, yeah, that's so. Yeah, that, like, that's your jam. Time to lose. So I went online because I just thought it'd be really helpful and, like, tell them how they're all in the culture and talk about real feminism. Like, maybe see if, like, they needed money to escape. Just, like, maybe some more education. Like, I could be their educator. But I did not do that because I just got so engrossed in reading it. I went back to the very beginning. I read, like, you know, into the archives. It was only two years old then, but still a lot of posts, yo, a lot of comments. And I asked a lot of questions and just kind of kept showing up over and over. And I told everybody I knew about fmh, everybody. And when I was still at it a year later, my friends Amy and Morgan had a really serious conversation about, like, what would be the trigger point for them to have a legitimate intervention for me. And they realized that that point had passed. We were past it now. And my girlfriend Rachel, who's like a good secular atheist from Philadelphia who's living in People's Republic of Boulder, said,

Sean Carter [00:44:47] what

Guest 6 [00:44:47] we don't understand, Sarah, is that, like, this is like, it's Jonestown and everybody's looking for the exit signs and you're on the outside and you're over a ladder. How can I get some more of that Jonestown? Step away. There's something wrong with you. So maybe it would have been a phase. And it probably would have been a phase like when you first discover Marxism, you know, and you're like, all about it, and you're like, oh, but I kind of like my credit card. But Lisa Butterworth invited me to go camping with her and another FMNH blogger, Nikki.

John Turner [00:45:26] And

Guest 6 [00:45:29] bless my mother in law who does not like me. She was coming to visit that same weekend. So I said I would like to do that very much. I put my toddler in the car and drove 15 hours. I really wanted to get away, and I did really want to see those women. And we fished and we hiked and we left our kids all around. And at night, we put the kids to bed and we build a campfire. We'd sing Mormon hymns, you know, like Good Crazy Face Girls do. And the most amazing thing of all is we would share our dreams. I mean, our literal dreams, not like our visions for the future. And I don't want you to think that I'm exaggerating. This is the most clear, simple way that I can explain this to you. Getting Lisa Butterworth and Nikki to interpret your dreams is like finding out that Carl Jung and Aretha Franklin met and they fell in love and they wrote one song. And that song, it's about you. It is this distillation of, like, soul and wisdom and, like, it's just the best. Lisa and Nikki want to hear about your dream and tell you what they think it means. Just do it. Just tell them your dream. It's really good stuff. So that was it. I was in the tank after that. I'm still an atheist, I'm still queer. I still go to my UU church. But I love me some Mormon feminism. Like, when you're a kid and people say, do you love her or do you like, love? I love Mormon feminism. And everything that I know about intersectionality, about feminism and race has come from the Mormon feminist women of color. Women like Brindis Roberts, Kehlani Tonga, Cheryl Hernandez, Misha McGriggs, Gina Colvin, Trina Thomas, and Janan Russell, who taught me to stop saying the priesthood ban because it erases the exact experiences of women of color. And I want to say their names, like, over and over so that other people hear their names too. I get to lean on Geralyn Hasselpool. Geraldine Hasselpool will legitimately cut you if you hurt her family. But if you're a queer kid and you get kicked out, she will take you in. And if your bishop is unkind, she will sit next to you in church and she will be the truest friend that you ever have. Lindsay Hanson park will put a picture of you up on Face after you've loaded up the diaper bag and the baby and her minivan and headed to Provo, the home of Brigham Young University, voted the most sober campus for at least 100 years running. And the caption will say, these bad B words went out tonight and we stormed Provo like it was our job. Mofem, I think. And you'll know that these are your kind of nerds. And if you're lucky, you'll catch a plane to San Diego in March when Wyoming is at its most bitter and desolate. Joanna Brooks will pick you up at your friend jolie's house. The three of you will get on the 101, crank the stereo all the way up, and as the low swung moon hovers over the skyline, you'll sing from the top of your lungs. Wayland Jennings classic, She's a Good Hearted Walnut in love with the two timing man. And you're gonna dedicate it to Emma Smith. And when times are hard, Theresa Noelle or Amanda will send you a blessing. They'll put their hands on your body and ask that you be well. Rachel will knit you a scarf. This cop and Provo will tell you he has to carry a knife on the job. Now, in the last year, he has cut down two gay men from the rafters. He's afraid he's going to have to do it again, and he wants it to stop. You'll propose to Gina Colvin in the pews of the community of Christchurch, because she's brilliant and she's strong, and you want her beside you. That's how it was for me, anyway. The first thing the Internet ever gave me was a poem. But the best thing it ever gave me was a home in the Mormon feminist community.

Kate Kelly [00:50:05] The amazing Sarah. Brilliant.

John Turner [00:50:08] Thank you.

Kate Kelly [00:50:09] Thank you so much for that story. You know, it's a good story when you're, like, tearing up and laughing and tearing up. For me, I cry a lot. A lot, a lot. I don't know.

Guest 6 [00:50:19] It's just.

Kate Kelly [00:50:20] It's Mormonism. It's everything. I was speaking the other day at an offshoot of the Tribeca Film Festival, and Abby Huntsman was interviewing me, and most of the people in the audience weren't Mormon, and I don't know if there are any Mormons in the audience. And I was, like, literally just, like, bawling, but kept telling my story, but then kept crying. And everyone was kind of like,

Guest 6 [00:50:46] It

Kate Kelly [00:50:46] was supposed to be the Disruptive Innovation Festival. And everyone is like, why is this girl crying? I kept trying to explain it was a Mormon thing, but I don't really think that got it across. And, like, you know, like, Glenn Beck. Didn't explain it. Yeah. Sarah Burlingham is someone who has rescued me so many times from the black, dark hole of the Internet where people

Guest 2 [00:51:16] are wrong on the Internet. Dang it.

Kate Kelly [00:51:18] And Sarah just PM me, and she's like, abort mission.

John Turner [00:51:23] Abort mission.

Kate Kelly [00:51:24] Sos And I never left, but I appreciate the advice.

Guest 2 [00:51:33] So.

Guest 6 [00:51:33] Yeah.

Kate Kelly [00:51:33] And I've also recently discovered Twitter. Yeah, Twitter is awesome, except for you can't stop people from messaging you on Twitter and tagging you. Sucks. There was an entire discussion about how I'm fat and why that's sad on Twitter.

Sean Carter [00:51:53] Yeah.

Kate Kelly [00:51:54] This week. Yeah, it's good. And, you know, it's bad when the haters come to your rescue. Like, BYU Cougar Fan67 was like, Guys, she's an idiot, but it's not nice to talk about how people look. I was like, thanks, BYU Cougar Fan. I really appreciate that.

John Turner [00:52:22] Yeah.

Kate Kelly [00:52:23] That's a small glimpse into my life. So many haters, a little time. One of the best hater comments that I've ever gotten was from someone who said, yeah, these Mormon feminists, they're dumb. And also, there's not a looker in the herd.

Guest 2 [00:52:43] Yeah.

Kate Kelly [00:52:43] Comparing women to animals, talking about their looks, about their ideas. It was just, like, such a succinct and terrible comment all in one. Also, a lot of comparisons to Satin. It's just hard to spell Satan. Turn. Satin is an evil fabric, just so you know. So I've been moved by the spirit tonight, just in case you thought people who are excommunicated can't still feel the spirit, they can. So if anyone in the audience wants to tell a story, we have had two people drop out. So if the spirit moves you, we're gonna have Stephen go. But if. If the spirit moves you after this, let me know, because I want to have a few people I know, a few people contacted me who wanted to tell stories. So if you feel a burning in your bosom, that means Satin is telling

John Turner [00:53:49] you to tell stories.

Steven Puente Shares His Mission Stories

Kate Kelly [00:53:53] All right, so our next storyteller is Steven Puente. This is the first time we were coming to be acquainted. He became highly, highly recommended by Elna. Stephen is a licensed social worker in New York, has been featured on the mock. Maybe the best thing about Stephen, although this is probably not he would characterize as the best thing about him is that he was featured in a documentary film about Doug Beach. Yeah. Amazing. He's nodding with chagrin. So welcome, Steve.

John Turner [00:54:26] Steven.

Kate Kelly [00:54:30] Thank you.

Stephen Puente [00:54:34] Yeah. Duck beach was not the highlight of my life, but it was fun. Brothers and sisters, so good to have you this evening. That felt good to say. It's been a while. I. I talk really low, so I'm just gonna, like, talk really loudly in the mic. So today I live in Harlem, and I was skating by some militant black men preaching on the sidewalk, and they said, white devil. White man is the white devil. I'm gonna try to tie that in. And I want you to remember that, because you gotta. You gotta pass that story on to somebody. I'll let you know who that is. So let's go back 20 years. I'm on my mission in Seattle, Washington. I'm a missionary, and I was born in Northern California on a blueberry farm. So Seattle was, you know, it was kind of fun. It would go back to my musical roots. Nirvana, Pearl jam. It was 1996. I was pretty excited. You'll find Eddie bitter. What I Did find was Spoon man in the local library, which anybody. I mean, refer.

Guest 2 [00:55:52] Thank you.

Stephen Puente [00:55:54] Spoon man was kind of awesome. So I was being transferred to my second area, and I was kind of pulled aside by some of the missionary leadership and said, stephen, you're kind of a rising star, so you think that you could be kind of a sister of the president someday. You know, I thought, you know, I was. I was 21 when I went on my missions. Not because of any infidelity. I was still taking my sacrament every Sunday. Don't. I know what you're thinking.

Kate Kelly [00:56:27] Right. I was thinking it.

Stephen Puente [00:56:29] Right. Right.

Guest 2 [00:56:33] Just.

Stephen Puente [00:56:34] It's really bad.

Kate Kelly [00:56:36] So.

Stephen Puente [00:56:37] But I was kind of being groomed, and I was pretty upset because I liked the area I was in and it was getting closer to the mission office, which I thought, you know what? You know, that the. Like, I'm gonna be honest with you, at that time in life, I think and a lot of other people, too, they just, you know, if they did everything right, they would slowly rise in the Mormon leadership. You know, it's bishop, then it's like, stake president. Pretty soon you're giving a talk at general Conference. Everybody is like, just loves anything you say.

Guest [00:57:08] Right.

Stephen Puente [00:57:09] And so I think I knew the Lord, like, knew, like, that I was. I was around. I was. That I was somebody. But I knew that, like, being close to the mission office was probably a better chance to kind of rise into leadership a little bit. So I was pretty excited about that. Plus, and the companion I was going to groom, he was green. He had a bad companion, so I was going to clean up the mess. I mean, that's how good I was. So the first day I meet this Elder Shemue. Elder Shemue at transfer, and the first thing he says to me is like, elder Puente. And I was like, yes, Elder Shemu. He's like, you work hard. I thought, you don't know who I am.

Guest 6 [00:57:52] Like,

Stephen Puente [00:57:54] I was living in Southern California before mission. I was playing basketball at Santa Barbara City College. I was very familiar with Gwen Stefani and Third Wave ska. I was like, totally hip, and he was Stretched Armstrong. Someone else told me I looked like some guy. The Aqueducts thought it was a huge compliment. So I did. I just said, yes. I work hard. And working hard for me was, I'm an oldest brother, son, and my family. Working hard was just being first. That's what I knew. So I was going to prove I worked hard. So I rode my bike faster than he did and would wait for him with righteous indignation and Thought that might prove. And he didn't. So I would stay up late because I don't like small talk or really talking to a whole lot of people. Doesn't really farewell being a social worker. But I like meaningful conversation. I don't like small talk. So I would stay up late to kind of avoid everybody. And he would have come in at the point that, you know, we need to go to bed. There's a certain, you know, time that I would say, you know, shamoy, just go to bed. And we had a typical, like, Mormon, like, missionary apartment, where for some reason it's like, I know we're in Seattle, but there's concrete. And it's not like hipster, like Brooklyn reclaimed wood concrete. It's like linoleum. It's peeled back. It's really bad. And we have like a 1970s couch because that's what Mormons totally decorate their house and give away to the missionaries. It was a horrible situation. We didn't have even sheets. I was sleeping on a mattress. And again, kind of going back. I was raised on those things that missionaries go through, things. This is what you have to do to become righteous and just do good so you can come home and marry a beautiful woman. And I believed it. And so you don't complain about these things. You just kind of go forward. But I would stay up late to avoid Elder Shamway in his creaky bed. Like, he was just like, you just creak. And then he would snore. So I just like, just go to bed, Elder Shamu. And then I'd get up early in the morning to prove that again, I'd be first. I'm kind of beating you into righteous submission. I'm on my way to become Elder Puente senior or something. So one night I stay up late, I'm reading some literature and I go to bed and El vashemwe snore and I'm pissed. And I don't really know how to deal with those kind of feelings because, I mean, I think one thing growing up there was never really kind of a righteous indignation kind of piece of handbook. So everything just kind of was passive aggressive.

Guest 2 [01:00:43] No.

Guest 5 [01:00:44] Yes.

Stephen Puente [01:00:47] We're really good at judging and we're really good at passive aggressive.

Guest 2 [01:00:50] Amen.

Stephen Puente [01:00:51] Something like that. Which is really good, which is fine because that's what communities do. That's just what commute. Anyways, I'm a social worker.

Sean Carter [01:01:00] I know about.

Stephen Puente [01:01:02] So I go in there and usually I just throw a sock if he's snoring. But I Don't. This time, I just stand over his bed, and I grab one of the bed posts, and I just start churning butter, just churning butter, thinking that, like, just. I'm so pissed at this kid. And then I slipped underneath my sheet and pretend I'm asleep. And I kind of peeked under my sheet to see what happened and gets out. He walks out into the living room and turns the light on. That's interesting. So I slowly get out of my bed, walk over to the doorway, and I look out, and there's Elder Shumway with his elbows on the, you know, the 1970s couch, praying to the ceiling, hoping his words get past that. I think, this is funny. And then I go back to bed. I don't know. I was a young kid. I didn't know what I was doing, but I thought it was funny. Next morning, I say, oh, show me. How'd you sleep last night? I was good. El Puente. There's a really interesting thing that happened. It's like, what's that? I don't know. I just felt some evil spirit in the room. And I woke up and the bed was moving. This is awesome. This is amazing. Yeah, that. Wow. I didn't feel anything. He's like, yeah, yeah. No. I came out here and I prayed. I think I feel better, but I think I'm gonna call Sister Matthews. Sister Matthews was kind of like the missionary mom in the mom kind of there, take care of us. She had our son on a mission, so she kind of transferred all that blood to us. And it was kind of weird. El Dashem would call her quite a bit, wanted complaints. We called her that morning to Sister Matthews, we need to have lunch. Which was great because she, like, took us to lunch. We did everything. So she picked us up in her little prelude. Haunted prelude again. It's 1996, and he's in front, I'm squeezed in the back, and we go get lunch. And we're sitting in the parking lot. He says, sister Matthews, I need to tell you something. We've been talking a lot about kind of why I'm here and all the struggles to stay on a mission back home. And, you know, I don't really remember, but his family was kind of struggling and all this stuff, and he just didn't know if he was going to stay on a mission. He's like, sister Matthews. And something happened last night. I said, oh, my goodness. And he goes on to tell her about how there's a devil in the room, this evil spirit, and his bed was moving around, and the thing I thought was funny at the time was, oh, my gosh, this is gonna be a guy, like, 10 years from now that is gonna be like, a general conference or some regional conference, and he's gonna tell this story. He's gonna tell the story. One day on my mission, I woke up, my bed was hovering, and I knew. I knew then that I needed to find. You know, he needed to reach out high, and he overcame it. That's how people become, like, great, like, talks and stuff. And so I thought, I cannot wait. It's gonna be such a long time. But I cannot wait to be in the crowd with my beautiful wife and go, like, that guy is so full of shit. That's where I was at the time. I mean, now I look back like, I was a little shit. So I held on, and I never told him. And so that's kind of what I'm telling you today, is if you know an Elder Shumway from Colorado, what I'm telling you also, this is like, 20 years. He might have children of age. I mean, they're now women go a little bit younger, right? On missions. 19, he's right there. His son might be on a mission right now, might be telling that story. So maybe we need to kind of, like, let him know the truth. It was not the devil, but again, maybe it was going back to Harlem today when I was skateboarding down the street in front of the WAC Militips, and they were screaming like a. I don't want to do a black accent right now. It seems really racist, but, like, white devil. White man is the white devil. And I know he wasn't really talking to me, but I was really the only guy in front of him at the time. He was screaming that through his microphone and PA system. So. Elder Shungway, I'm sorry. I want you to know the truth that I am. I'm a little shit. I am the white devil that was in the room that night. And I hope you married well.

Navigating Sexuality and Identity in the Church

Kate Kelly [01:06:13] Amazing. I was also a missionary. I served my mission in Barcelona, Spain. And I. Contrary to what some people might think, I was, like, psychotically rigid about the rules. Like, I was like Stephen, one of those people who I thought, you know, you were taught on your mission. If you were strictly obedient, then you would get blessings. And if you were not obedient, like, people would perish in hell, basically.

John Turner [01:06:45] Like, you.

Kate Kelly [01:06:46] You, like, if you didn't brush your teeth on time in the morning, someone would not join the church, and then they would never get to the celestial kingdom, basically. That's actually not an exaggeration. I see some nods. And so I was extremely, extremely, extremely rigid. And we had a model schedule. And the model schedule literally broke down into 15 minute increments, what you were supposed to do in your entire day. And so I was like, we are doing that model schedule. And I had a sister missionary. She came out. She was like, from Idaho or something. I don't know. No offense to anyone from Idaho, but. And she came out and she literally cried the entire first day for no reason. Just. She just cried the whole time. And I was like, all right, we're doing the model schedule. And if she didn't have her teeth brushed in the morning, I would go out the door and I would push her out the door, and I'd be like, you're brushing your teeth in the hall. We have to leave at 9:15. Yeah, I was a nut. So fast forward. I, too, now also feel a little bit bad. And she probably telling stories like, that girl made me brush my teeth in the hallway. And now she's an apostate. She got her just desserts in the end. And she also married well, I'm sure. Okay. Speaking of marriage, this is something that I always thought was really important on my mission. How many single people do we have in the audience? Raise your hands. Come on. Hi. Hi. Look around. Okay, awesome. After this, we're having dinner. All of you should come. We're also going to be mingling these. Like, anyone who's willing to come to this event is awesome. Right? Okay, let's clap.

Guest 2 [01:08:40] Anyone?

Kate Kelly [01:08:45] We should all meet each other and be friends.

John Turner [01:08:47] The end.

Kate Kelly [01:08:48] I'm happily married and I'm more. So I have to do that. I have no. No drama in my life except for online and on Twitter. Okay, so who's feeling a burning in their bosom that they should tell a really funny story? It can be a short story. Yes, Danielle. Okay. I feel like this is, like, the price of is right. Come on down. Okay, so Danielle Mooney is on the executive board of Bordeaux Women. She lives in Boston. She recently had a baby. I'm not gonna know everything about anyone else who's gonna come, but I do know Danielle, so yay, Danielle.

John Turner [01:09:30] Hi, everyone.

Guest 3 [01:09:32] So I have a story for you. It's a love story. It is a devastating elementary school romance, and I will relay it to you in 10 scenes. So as an introduction, James McGee. Oh, that name, like, still makes my heart swell a little. Sorry. Husband in the back. Oh, it was. He was my height, and he had hair that curled all over his head, he wore glasses and had skin the color of gold or brown and or both. And I really liked him. Liked him liked him. He was not in my class though he was in one of the other sixth grade class so I only saw him in our honors math where he sat one row over and two seats back. Also at recess where I could keep track of him from afar while playing endless variations of tag with my three very close friends. He was good at kickball, just to give him credit. So one I needed to tell someone how I felt, but not my sister. At night in our beds she would swear not to say a word to mom, but inevitably the next morning, or in the car on the way to Target or over dinner, she would betray me. I told her anyway because I couldn't not tell someone I like A boy, James McGee don't tell mom because I was raised in an LDS household and I was 12 years old, not 16. And while my parents were not wildly strict, we also did not drink caffeinated soda and we did not watch TV shows where kids were mean to each other and said bad words. So the next day though, Brianna, my sister, made the announcement at breakfast while I blushed horribly and felt for the lines in the linoleum with my feet. Thankfully dad wasn't home or I would have just died. I didn't tell my sister another secret until after we had both graduated from high school. 2. My three best friends and I were entrenched in a game of secret telling and exchanges of loyalties I don't think any of us even understood. I proudly told one of them, my friend Sarah, that because I was 12, I got to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead and she was like what? Dead people and baptisms? I'm telling Kimberly. And I was like no, no no

John Turner [01:13:06] no no no no.

Guest 3 [01:13:08] Because I wasn't totally sure what was wrong with what I had just said, but I could tell by her reaction that it was not a normal thing to be excited about doing. So I couldn't tell them that I liked James, it was too valuable commodity and I was currently in debt due to this going to the temples to do weird stuff with water and dead people. So I told someone else, a friend, Carly, and she swore she wouldn't say anything, especially not to Sarah. I told her in a note during social studies two days later, Sarah asked me if I really did like James because she heard I did and told him

John Turner [01:13:59] yeah,

Guest 3 [01:14:02] my stomach like fell to the floor. But then she said that he said that he had a crush on me too. I felt floaty and far above being mad at any of them, even Carly, because I liked somebody who liked me back and this was no time to be petty. 3 I read in YM Teen magazine that if you make eye contact with a boy and smile simultaneously, he will know you have feelings for him. So in full band practice, I gathered all the courage I possessed. I turned all the way around in my seat with the woodwinds to meet his eyes while he played drum. I barely managed to raise the corners of my lips before I whipped back around. The magnetism, desire, and emotion that passed between us was almost too much to

Kate Kelly [01:15:02] bear

Guest 3 [01:15:05] and fill the corners of my vision with white light. How did those girls in the magazine do it? My muscles quivered for the rest of the day. 4. Once James and I wrote each other notes, I didn't know how to sign off. Love was out of the question. Everything else seemed too cold. After much deliberation, I settled on like ya Danielle like being the highest degree of affection I could express and the ya there to keep things light and cute. He signed his amour James Philly in quotation marks. McGee Philly. His middle name was Philip and you know he was keeping things cool. 5. I thought I should deepen our relationship by teasing him. After a day of jokes made by our classmates about his favorite color being baby blue for the Tar Heels, I was inspired. I bought James a set of baby blue shoelaces and wrapped them. I gave him the present. The next morning at school, the friends who gathered around us at James desk giggled as they waited anxiously to see what the gift was. He tore the paper and then looked at me, blushing. Jerk, he mumbled as I left for my class with a ringing bell and smiling friends. That afternoon. The next time I saw him, he showed me his shoes done up tightly with the blue laces. They're too small, he told me. Oh, I said. I didn't mean for you to actually wear them. Sorry. And I did feel a little sorry, but also powerful. Six Every day I walked nine tenths of a mile to school past James Yellow House. I hoped every day we would cross paths, but in retrospect I think his mom mostly drove him. Every so often we wouldn't if he was far ahead. I would speed walk and yes, maybe kind of run, but only if he wasn't going to look back and I would have enough time to slow my breathing again if he was behind me. I walked so slowly it was silly. I had to tie my shoes a lot, but for some reason, whenever we did chance to meet, we were on opposite sides of the road, residential seat, suburban street. And yet neither of us ever crossed to the other side. We walked parallel instead all the way to school, stealing sidelong glances. Somehow this felt profound. 7. Sarah told James I did yoga. Neither of them knew what they meant, so they looked it up in the dictionary. So does that mean she's a yogi? James asked. Sarah passed that question along. I said no because I thought yogi was an ugly word. 8. I pondered deeply the question of whether he would be willing to wait for

John Turner [01:18:27] me to turn 16.

Guest 3 [01:18:29] We were 12. As I said, I thought it would be highly romantic for us to spend four years in some kind of yearning friendship, our hearts closed off to all others until we could finally be together. I probably read too many books as a child. 9. At the end of School DARE program, James introduced me to his mom and dad and little sisters. I wasn't sure how to handle meeting the parents of my 12 year old love. I hoped they thought I was pretty and good enough for their son. As a devoutly raised Mormon girl, I knew that marriage was very important and imminently around the corner. I liked that he had a lot of little sisters. I believed that boded well for any future family we might have. According to Sarah, we both wanted five kids. We were off to a good start. 10. The end the of school dance was confusing. It was the same day that I realized I wore a lot of gray, maybe too much. I was also fairly sure I was too fat to wear many other colors. I don't know where that idea came from. Probably YM Petit magazine. The gym was dark and filled with clumps of sixth graders dimly illuminated by a handful of neon lights. James told me he didn't dance. I said that was fine, but I didn't mean it. I wanted a reason for us to touch each other. Elementary school was ending. Epilogue James and I didn't see each other all summer, though I wrote him a postcard from Nebraska that I never sent and I still have. We met again on the bus to seventh grade orientation. We were still in love every day. He met me at my locker and walked me to our math class. We never touched, though our hands swung perilously close as we walked through the halls. He asked me if I would go out with him after I told Sarah to tell him that it didn't count unless he actually asked me. I felt guilty for dating at 13. Oh, so guilty I couldn't tell my mom. James gave me a candle and The Mariah Carey single heartbreaker for my birthday. And one month later, following a confusing back and forth through and instigated by Sarah about whether there was anything going on between me and my lab partner, Oscar Boyle Mejia, who had a large mole on his cheek and a determined belief that he was a star child, I found myself at a loss as to how to repair the gap between James and I. I wasn't sure I could bear a conversation with him because we were so in love. We had never held hands, let alone kissed. So I wrote him a heartbroken breakup note and slid it into his locker. He didn't find it. I had to tell him it was over after math class near the front office as I watched his cheeks redden. Later, someone told me that for the rest of the day, it looked like James had been crying. He found the note three months later. He told me about it when we were juniors in high school. I still wish he had been my first.

John Turner [01:22:19] Oh, man.

Kate Kelly [01:22:20] I knew the spirit had moved me in such a good way. I also had a team. Well, okay. I had a guy who had a crush on me. He came up to me in the church parking lot, handed me a mix tape. Sean, I'm with you. Tape. Cassette tape. And I was like, what is this? He was weird. And so I'm looking at the tape and all of the songs, I slowly realized as he was standing there awkwardly in front of me, had the word love in them.

Guest 2 [01:22:51] Yeah.

Kate Kelly [01:22:51] But I was very straightforward then, as I am now. And I said, I hope you know the feeling is not mutual. And I handled the tape back. I know. Hey, I was like, 13

Sean Carter [01:23:12] and.

Kate Kelly [01:23:13] Yeah, but he persisted and kept calling my house and saying things like, are you a thief? Cuz you stole the stars and put them in your eyes.

Sean Carter [01:23:22] True story.

Kate Kelly [01:23:23] True story.

Guest 2 [01:23:24] Story.

Kate Kelly [01:23:26] Last I heard of him, he did a competition, a radio competition where he had to do naked bowling for some football tickets. I think I dodged a bullet on that one. Glad it worked out. The end. Okay, so our final story contestant is going to be Elna, But I think we have one more. Spirit has moved her. What's your name?

Awkward Church Lessons About Sex and the Body

Guest 2 [01:23:51] My name's Brooke. Brooke.

Kate Kelly [01:23:52] Awesome.

Guest 2 [01:23:59] So my name's Brooke. I'm single. So I've often kind of felt like these kind of mixed feelings about the Mormon feminist housewives name. Because I'm like, you know, that's not inclusive of me. But anyway, I lived in New York about ten and a half years. I work in fine art insurance, and I thought I'd talk a little bit about the law of chastity. Okay,

Kate Kelly [01:24:30] we're already laughing.

Guest 2 [01:24:31] You had some awkward kind of lessons on chastity. As members of this church, you get a lot. Like, you know, at least once a year you get a talk in church from your bishop or, you know, when you're at byu, you get a lot

Guest 3 [01:24:45] of great, great talks.

Guest 2 [01:24:48] I've had a lot, I've had a lot of them. But there was one, there was one that was kind of special and it had a big impact on me that I still see the effects of today. So I'll tell you kind of what that talk was and I'll just share a little bit of what it's been like for me in New York. So we had, in young women's, we had a teacher who was like me, single, and they gave us all these oranges, all the young women, and they all. They had written with marker on them the Lord's gift. And we weren't supposed to share it or whatever. I really don't know what it meant. We were supposed to keep it, not give it away. And I killed mine for a while. But. So one of our teachers, the one who wasn't married, took out an orange that she had been given when she was probably my age. And it was this kind of dried out orange.

Guest 6 [01:25:57] Apologies.

Kate Kelly [01:25:58] I'm.

Guest 2 [01:25:58] Obviously, I'm still thinking about it. And then I ended up writing this story for school about how this girl got a gift and she ate the orange and she threw it away and she had sex with some guy and he never called her. That was like this moral lesson. So I'm not going to tell you if I, you know, I'm a virgin or not. You can decide, whatever. But dating in New York has been fun. I've never really dated a Mormon guy. I've tried. And so I'm like, okay, that's not working. So I'm gonna get out there, I'm gonna try some Tinder, I'm gonna try some OkCupid, you know, and there's just been some treasures and I can't really decide which one to share, but I'll just share one that was particularly poignant and I learned a lot from, from it. And I think you can all learn

Guest 5 [01:26:52] a lot from this as well.

Guest 2 [01:26:54] So I went out with this guy, shorter than me, Chinese, long hair, with like sleeve tattoos, really attractive to me, whatever, that's not important. But he was. So we meet for like coffee or something and I get a tea. He hasn't paid for it, you know, whatever. That's a common Common occurrence. But he was. We talked about that later. But anyway, when he was trying to. You know, when he was trying to convince me to have sex with him. So we're hanging out, and he's telling me that I don't act like other girls. And I'm like, I'm learning. I'm learning. You know, a girl, usually when she's into you, she'll be really affectionate and,

John Turner [01:27:40] like, flirty and kiss.

Guest 2 [01:27:42] And I wasn't doing that. I was like, okay, this is good. This is good. I'm learning. This is what a real woman does, not a Mormon woman, a real world woman does.

Kate Kelly [01:27:51] She flirts.

Guest 2 [01:27:52] Okay, I'm learning. And I kind of liked him. I was feeling a little lonely, so I walked him home. And I was like, he's like, you want to come up? And I was like, yeah, sure, we'll come up. And so we get to his apartment and. And I think he's probably, like, the first guy who kind of took his shirt off in front of me. I was like. And I kind of looked away.

John Turner [01:28:15] And I was like, I don't know what to do.

Guest 2 [01:28:18] So anyway, he's like, you do know that when a girl comes up to a guy's apartment, there's only one thing he's expecting. So he told, you know, And I was kind of like, well, can I just be, like, nice to you and

Guest 6 [01:28:35] kind of kiss you a little bit?

Guest 3 [01:28:38] I really like you.

Guest 2 [01:28:39] We don't have to have sex right now. And he was like, only penis and vagina. That is all I will accept.

Kate Kelly [01:28:49] That is all I want.

Guest 2 [01:28:50] Nothing else is good enough. I kept trying, you know, I kept trying. And eventually he kicked me out, which was kind of. But we did talk.

Kate Kelly [01:29:00] I just say, why would I have sex with you?

Guest 2 [01:29:01] You didn't even pay for my drink. Oh, you were in such a hurry

John Turner [01:29:06] to get the drink.

Guest 2 [01:29:08] So anyway. But I learned a lot, and that. And that's kind of like a little taste of what it's been like. So I don't really have a special way to end this because I don't

Kate Kelly [01:29:20] know where it's going to go.

Guest 2 [01:29:28] Good stories. I'm happy to share them with you.

Sean Carter [01:29:42] Yeah.

Kate Kelly [01:29:42] When you're married, it's like you look back on dating and you're like, that wasn't that bad. And then you remember in my case that you broke with your husband seven times before he got married. It's true, it's true. We're happily married. Don't worry. And one time we broke up, I deleted his phone and threw away my phone so that he couldn't call me. And my mother got his number from my sister and invited him over for dinner. That's true. She's like, even if you're not going to be friends with him, we still want him in our lives. I was like, I hate you. So worked out, we got married. Don't worry, there's still hope. So our final storyteller is Elna Baker. She is a writer and performer. She has written a book, aptly titled New York Regional Mormon Singles, Halloween Dance, a memoir.

Sean Carter [01:30:42] She.

Kate Kelly [01:30:43] She's been on the Moth, BBC Radio, this American Life. Welcome, Elna Baker. Hello.

John Turner [01:30:55] All right, I'll try to talk loud because this mic is kind of quiet, but first off, I want to say how grateful I am to perform in front of just. I mean, not. Maybe there's some. Not Mormons, but mostly Mormons.

Kate Kelly [01:31:06] Yeah.

John Turner [01:31:07] I mean, a lot of people, People don't know this, but my start in comedy was testinoe, meaning, like, I was literally testimony. It was like a little bit of a spiritual idea. Mostly I was like, material. No, they don't like it. I'll try again. I did also my first stand up routine at Combined Fag. I was only ever allowed to do it once because I offended everyone with a joke. In retrospect, I don't think it's that offensive. The joke was. It's not even that good of a joke, but it was like, hey, we're at like, the singles ward. And yet, like, we, you know, we obviously know we're here to get married, but no one directly acknowledges it. So it sort of feels like a bunch of factory workers in an assembly line just pretending to be like, yeah, we're here for fun. It's fun. Like, can't we all just admit we're here to eventually screw a nut on a bolt? So I actually. It's so funny. I literally am talking about the same thing Brooke did, which is good to know because that means we're all damaged in a very similar way. So growing up, you know, you had the chastity lessons in church and. And they would try to teach these things, which was essentially about sex, but they couldn't use actual words. So often. The message was completely lost in the object lesson. So my favorite was we came into class one Sunday and the teacher had written chastity on the board, like, ominously. And then she walked in, we're all sitting, and she just like slammed a tray of cookies on the table and was like, does anyone want a cookie? Cookie and then upon closer inspection, they were all broken and, like, covered in dirt and soil. And we were like, no. And then she, like, nodded her head and was like, that's right. Nobody wants a dirty, half eaten cookie. Which is like how I learned not to have sex. But the funny thing is, like, in New York, you quickly realize, like, late at night when everyone's been drinking, dirty cookies don't look so bad. That's not actually how it works. But my other favorite ones were like, I don't know if you've had any of these, but they would pass around a rose and they would say, like, you know, touch the petals, like, rough. Be rough with that rose. Pass it to the next person, touch it, rub it, do whatever you want. And then, you know, at the end, they told up the rose and it was like a disaster. That was like a road in the walk of shame. And then they would be like, yep, yeah, never gonna look like it did before you all touched it. Or there's the one which to me doesn't to this day. I was just, like, trying to remember it. And I asked a friend and she was like, oh, yeah, they did that. Raise your hand if you had this one where they brought in toast and they were like, do you? Yep, yeah, yep. They brought in toast and they were like, you want some toast? And then the teacher would lick the toast and be like, do you want that toast still? No. But it's also very sexual. I guess that was the most direct of them. Also the worst one, it was my friend Aaron. He was in the other steak and the one that they did, I cannot believe they did this, but they had a handkerchief. And they, like, went around the room and they said, like, sneeze into the handkerchief. And then it just got like five, 30 deep. Because I don't want to. You gotta sneeze into the handkerchief. Kids are like, vomiting. So I also feel like the things that they warned us against were, like, things that happened in the 50s. Like, we were always told, like, don't neck or park or, like, pet. Like, as an adult, like, no one. I still kind of feel sad. No one's ever necked me. Guys. And I can only assume, like, petting is when, like, a guy hands you, like, a handful of kernel of corn and then strokes your hair. I don't know. But one of my favorite moments in Young Men Combined, young men, young women, they were warning us about, like, the dangers of, you know, sort of putting yourself in a temptation because, like, you know, if you inch your way in, then Satan can tempt you. So they teach, said, you know, why might you not want to go on top of, you know, mount such and such and park with your girlfriend? And a 12 year old boy in the back raised his hand and he was like, because you might want to kill her. No, no, not where this is going. But then like the details of sex, they left that up to our parents which like there should have been more supervision with what Mormon parents tried to explain what sex was like. I've heard that a friend of mine's parents did this and I know other parents have done this, which is when they teach the birds and the bees instead of using like the correct anatomical body parts because that would be gross to say out loud. They use different Hostesses products. So like, yeah, yeah, a penis is a Twinkie, a vagina is a fruit pie, and then the butt is honey buns. But then as he was saying this, I was like, what butt is in your sex talk, isn't it? But I still remember the sex talk that my mother gave me. I think I, I was probably 11 or 12 and I can still feel mortified even thinking about it. My mom was always primary president and when you would come into the primary room on the chalkboard, she's a very good artist, but all her drawings have a very precious moments vibe. So you would come in and there would be like a precious moments chalk drawing of like a girl praying or reading her scriptures with, you know, those big droopy eyes. And so that was like my mom's artistic style. So when she gave the sex talk, she came in with two drawings that were like precious moments with all their precious moments. I just remember like so disturbed to see like the precious moments with a penis, like it's just not. And then after that I couldn't go to primary and see these things without just like looking down with shame. But you know the thing that my parents never talked to me about, I honestly think my mom may not have talked to me about it because she didn't know what it was. But masturbation, like I was never as a kid explained what that was. I didn't know what it was. So like, I think around 11 or 12, like as a curious kid, one night that happened, got it. And I didn't know what, what it was. And then I immediately, though weirdly, just instinctually was like, that was so wrong. I can never, ever, ever do it again. So I didn't do it again. And maybe two years later, you know, they started in young men's and young women they were talking about the little factory talk. Does anyone know this is. If you don't know it, Google it. It is unbelievable. It's Boyd K. Packer. It's talking about masturbation, but again, not using the words. And so he's like, there's this power in men, and I liken it to a little factory in your body. And there's a valve, and the valve will release workers that wear white. And if it's released by a dream, that's okay. Don't feel bad. But if you. And he actually says, if you fondle the valve, then that's wrong. So it's just the most confusing. So I remember hearing this, and I had no idea, where's the. What air is this factory? I can't work hard. What leaves their job via a valve? I don't understand what n was. Then one of the other girls in my young women's group, she explained it to me, and she said, you know, it's masturbation. And I was like, well, what is that? And. And she explained what it was and described what I had done two years earlier. And then she said, well, you know, masturbation is as bad as just having sex. So if you have. If you've masturbated, you might as well have sex. Which the teacher completely reiterated in her lesson. And then I also knew that sex was, like, the second most serious sin next to murder. So I did the math, and I was like, okay, I masturbated. I basically had sex. Oh, my. I just killed someone. Killed someone. I'm 14, and I killed someone. And so the guilt of this. I was wracked with this guilt for a year. Like, I just. Like you all, you felt the guilt, right? Guys, it is hard. Some of the guilt that we grow up feeling for the. These things that are ultimately, at least the first time, very natural. And I.

Guest 6 [01:40:47] That's a weird way of putting it,

John Turner [01:40:50] but after about a year of feeling this guilt and, like, overthinking and praying, like, repent. Trying to repent, I. You know, I was like, well, one of the parts of the repentance process is you have to kind of say it out loud, right? So I'm driving back from seminary with my older sister, and we were listening to Third Eye Blind. And I remember, like, reaching, like, so, like, shakingly nervous, like, slowly turning the dial down and being like, I have to tell you something. My sister was like, what? You can tell me? And I started crying, and I was like, I masturbated, which basically means I killed somebody. And I just remember my sister, like, it was really, in retrospect, way more uncomfortable for her just being like, okay, she turned the music back. But I was telling this to my brother recently, and we were, like, comparing notes on some of these things that happened. And he told me, I think, one of my favorite Mormon guilt stories, which is when he was a teenager, he's younger than me, the computer for the whole house was in his room. So, like, you know, not so smart. The only boy of five girls who's 14, they put the computer in his room. And so, you know, as he came out, the power within him in the factory, you know, you get it. He was curious. And one night, he Googled the word boobs, right? I think actually he Googled the two dirtiest words he knew. Sexy boobs. Guess what? A lot of pictures, sexy boobs came. And, you know, he felt very guilty for looking at the pictures. And then, you know, he tried, you know, that battle where you're like, I'll never do it again, except right now. So for a couple months, he would occasionally look at those sexy boobs on the Internet. And then he felt so wrought with guilt that he went to the bishop and he, you know, confessed this. And the bishop told him the only way to repent was that he had to go tell my parents that he had an addiction to porn. And in retrospect, like, I mean, I don't think that's an addiction to porn, but so he says the most awkward moment of his life was, like, sort of approaching the backs of my parents in the kitchen and, like, tapping them on the shoulder and being like, I. I have to tell you something. I have a serious addiction to porn. And we can no longer have the computer in my room. And what they must have fought for years of his life, like, who they like, he just looked dead.

Guest 2 [01:44:00] Boo.

John Turner [01:44:03] But so I. I mean, I was practicing more until I was 28, and I think probably, like, what the. You know, the final star was a similar struggle of, like, the orange drying up.

Guest 2 [01:44:17] And then

John Turner [01:44:20] I ended up, like, having premarital sex, which you may. Some of you may know about because I wrote an article about it for Glamour, which, to be fair, was, like, meant to be this, like, heartfelt piece about, like, what it's like to lose your virginity later in life. And then Glamour got their hands on it. You can Google this. They called it. Guess what. I'm not a virgin anymore. Exclamation point. And there's, like, a photo of me dangling a cherry over my mouth, which, to be Fair. I posed for that photo. But the best part was the capture. Underneath the photo, it says, elna Baker, author and former virgin. Is that a byline? Like barack Obama, president and former virgin. But you know, obviously in that time, like, making the decision to move forward with my life in that regard and like, you know, crumple up the flower or lick the toes, all those things that, you know, eating dirty, letting my dirty cookies, whatever. The guilt of it was tremendous. I mean, it was so hard to like move through that. It was like moving through tar. I think there's probably a new era ad literally, it's in you guys. It's still in me. But one of the things I remember feeling sad about was that when my sisters had sex, it was before their wedding nights and my mom had given them each like a pre wedding night sex talk. I can only imagine with precious moments drawings. I always wondered what she said to them or what that sort of ceremonial moment was. And I felt sad that I'd never. That I prevented myself from having it. And so it just so happened my brother was getting married. And after the rehearsal dinner, we're driving back to the hotel. And I was. I could have taken the other car, but I luckily was in the backseat of the car next to my brother. And my mom in the front seat is like, britton, do you want the talk? Like the pre wedding night talk? My brother was like, no, ma. And no, no. And I like nudged. And I'm like, get the talk.

Sean Carter [01:46:47] Get the talk.

John Turner [01:46:48] Come on, get the talk. So she gave him the talk. And this is the thing that I had. I would have missed had I not been in the car was my mother's pre wedding night talk goes exactly like this. For women, the first time is very painful. So you want to buy Ky Jello and use that, which I don't. I wonder if that is a morm. Is there? Ky Jello is not.

Kate Kelly [01:47:15] She just said it wrong, Right?

John Turner [01:47:18] And then her next piece of advice was also you to be a good gentleman, always have a glass of cranberry juice next to the bed.

Kate Kelly [01:47:28] Oh, my gosh.

John Turner [01:47:29] So that's it. That's all I miss. And, you know, if I had waited for that, I was disappointed. Thank you, you guys.

Kate Kelly [01:47:51] Thank you so much, Elna. I think that one line from that story really sums up this entire evening. And so much of my experience were all damaged in the same way. Okay, awesome.

Guest [01:48:14] Thanks 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 Music for this episode was provided

Kate Kelly [01:48:26] by the Lower Lights and other sources.

John Turner [01:48:30] Cease to make me whole

Kate Kelly [01:48:37] when with the wounded heart, anger or malice I trust myself apart, searching my soul.

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.