Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 721

John Dehlin [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. The kindly light amid encircling gloom

Daniel Parkinson [00:00:43] Lead

Wendy Montgomery [00:00:43] thou me on the night.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is April 3, 2017, and today we are a little bit more sober. I'm not going to say we're excited to talk about this topic because that would be inappropriate. Today we have a very sober and important topic that we're going to be discussing. The title of today's presentation is or panel discussion is Utah's Escalating Suicide Crisis and LDS LGBTQ Despair. We're going to be talking about how the suicide rates in Utah, especially among youth, but also among adults, has been dramatically increasing over the past eight years or so. And I'm just really grateful for the panelists that are willing to discuss this. So without any further ado, what I'm going to do is introduce two of our panelists, and a third will hopefully be joining us soon. But to begin with, I'm going to be introducing my cousin, Daniel Parkinson. Daniel is the author of the article that was released on rationalface.com and in reality, they've done a series of blog posts on this topic. So, Daniel, if you don't mind, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself a little bit, Tell our audience about yourself.

Daniel Parkinson [00:02:22] Yeah. I'm Danny Parkinson. I am a psychiatrist. I work in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I was raised in Utah, and I am gay and was raised lds. And I've been involved somewhat in activism around the LGBT LDS issue for the past few years, and that's how I kind of got involved with this particular cause. And I've tried to use what little expertise I might have to promote a healthier situation for, especially for our LGBT youth in the Mormon sphere.

John Dehlin [00:03:02] Beautiful. Well, cousin, it's great to have you. I should note that you were host of Gay Mormon Stories podcast for many, many episodes, and you've been on Mormon Stories before as at least as a part of a panel. Right?

Daniel Parkinson [00:03:14] Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] Yeah. Well, welcome back. It's good to have you?

Daniel Parkinson [00:03:18] Thanks.

Meet the Panelists

John Dehlin [00:03:19] Our second panelist is Wendy Williams Montgomery. Wendy, why don't you unmute yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Wendy Montgomery [00:03:27] Thanks for having me on. My name is Wendy Montgomery. My husband Tom, hopefully is joining us a little bit later. A little bit about us. We've been married each 22 years. We have five kids. We were raising our kids much like we were raised in very orthodox, conservative Mormon household. We moved from California to Arizona about a year and a half ago. Our oldest son, who's now 18, came out to us as gay five years ago when he was 13. Turned our tiny little Mormon world upside down. Changed our paradigm forever. But for the better, for far, far, far for the better. He's such a blessing to us. And since then, we've just been quite outspoken and vocal on working to make the Mormon church and local communities more accepting and loving of LGBT people. We've been spokespeople and worked with the Family Acceptance Project. There's a documentary on our family called Families Are Forever that kind of talks about the minefield of having a gay child in the Mormon Church and how to navigate that. I'm on the board of Affirmation and Mama Dragons, one of the co founders of Mama Dragons. Yeah, we speak about this as often as we can just to increase awareness around the subject because we're losing too many.

John Dehlin [00:04:54] All right, well, Wendy, I'm glad to have you on Mormon stories, and I'm sorry it's not about happier topics.

Wendy Montgomery [00:05:00] Yeah, me too.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] And we'll introduce Tom as soon as he's able to join us. I want to thank our live listeners for tuning in. We actually already have 72 people tuned in live. A shout out to Danae, to David, who's joining us from the uk Kevin Kloosterman is joining us from Illinois.

Daniel Parkinson [00:05:19] Randy.

John Dehlin [00:05:20] Hey, Kevin, Caleb. Lots of people joining us. So shout out to all our listeners. Just really quick to our live listeners. One of the main reasons we broadcast live is so that people can share with us comments and questions live. It's a little bit more participatory. So if anybody has stories or comments or questions or feedback, please post them to the live stream and we'll do our best to incorporate what we can into our discussion. So without any further ado, Daniel, I'm going to come back to you. And one of the things I know for sure is that simply discussing suicidality at all, but particularly amongst LGBT populations and LGBT youth, is a very tricky matter. You know, there are concerns about contagion, suicide, contagion. There are Concerns about not wanting to make the problem worse. There's also concerns about weaponizing, you know, the tragic death of individuals for sort of social, political purposes. And we don't want to do any of that. So, Daniel, what I'd love to do is start with you talking about some guidelines for how to talk about this kind of stuff in the most constructive way. And then, Wendy, I'm going to bring you on after Daniel, to give your two cents. But Daniel, why don't you go ahead and start?

Guidelines for Discussing Suicide Responsibly

Daniel Parkinson [00:06:45] Okay, well, I'll just go down the do's and the don'ts that that are accepted. They just know that there's a huge difference in the rates of suicide contagion or copycat suicides based on how the issue is covered by the press. So we want to consider any public discussion about suicide or even Facebook posts to be have a similar, you know, implications, similar. We need to take responsibility for how we discuss it. First of all, we do have to discuss it. There's no question that we need to discuss it. But here's the 12 main points it says. Do emphasize individual and collective responsibility for supporting the well being of LGBT people. Do encourage help seeking by lgbt, LGBT people, people who may be contemplating suicide, and emphasize the availability of resources. 3. Do emphasize the vital importance of family support and acceptance, not just for suicide, but for many things. Do not include details of a suicide death in titles or headlines and don't describe the method used in a suicide death. Don't attribute a suicide death to experiences known or believed to have occurred shortly before the person died. That's really important because that means we have to be careful about guessing why they committed suicide. Don't normalize suicide by presenting it as the logical consequence of the kinds of bullying, rejection and discrimination and exclusion that LGBT often experiences. So that's once again is tricky because we know that all those things do contribute to suicide, but it doesn't. We need to emphasize that suicide is not an inevitable outcome and that's important so that the people who are contemplating suicide will be able to see other ideas of how to escape from their despair. Number eight is don't idolize suicide victims or create an aura of celebrity around them. Once again, that can be hard to do when we're trying to really mourn and remember a person. Don't use terms like bulli side, Which is sort of the same idea. It suggests that suicide is a natural response to bullying. Don't talk about suicide as epidemics. Once again, tricky here because we are talking about a phenomena of elevated Suicide rates. But we have to realize, and in this context, it's certainly an ongoing thing. It's not like an epidemic in the sense that it's just this year. We would have trouble calling an epidemic something that's been going on this long. Don't use the word successful or unsuccessful or failed when talking about suicide. So instead you should say died from suicide, a suicide death, an attempted suicide. And the most common word committed suicide is, it's nice if we can get away from saying committed suicide, but instead say died by suicide. And last of all, don't say that a specific policy or its absence will in and of itself prevent suicide. That's once again tricky because we have a lot of studies that show how policies impact suicide. But once again we want to get away from, they suggest, talk about how anti LGBT laws or policies have shown to negatively impact the well being of LGBT people. Those are the main things it suggests. Also not using Twitter or Facebook to announce news of suicide deaths. Don't repost problematic mainstream media headlines on your Facebook. These are just things that all of us can do and don't. We shouldn't call it a suicide epidemic in the social media. And be careful how you phrase things. Right. Unfortunately, we now have more options besides liking a post. So it's nicer to, you know, use a different icon right when we emoticon when we're responding to somebody else's post. So those are sort of the basics on what we are going to try to do. And we don't always succeed 100% because they're complicated issues. And we do, we do have a mandate to make bring awareness to this problem because there are solutions. And if we don't bring awareness, we solutions aren't going to be responded to. And when you say we don't want to weaponize the suicide issue, we don't want to weaponize it, but we certainly want to learn from the suicides that have happened and use that to prevent future suicides. So if you're calling that weaponizing, you know, that's not how I see it. But I wouldn't necessarily want to use that as my argument that, you know, we should legalize gay marriage. Except that once again, we do see an impact on the legalization of marriages and the suicide rate, as we'll see. So it's a tricky issue. It's tricky to call it weaponizing. And that is often how a community might see it when they're, when they're seeing the gay community as the adversary, then they'll jump to the conclusion that the gay community is weaponizing. So, but anyway, I don't know if that kind of covers what we ought to as far as the basics of about safely discussing suicide.

John Dehlin [00:12:52] Yeah, I want to respond to that list. We're going to go ahead and post a link to that list in our blog post. Maybe I'll also post it to the comment section. But while I'm doing that, Wendy, what do you want to add to what Daniel said? And then I kind of want to give a reaction. But Wendy, let me give you chance first.

Wendy Montgomery [00:13:13] Right. It's a really inclusive, good list. I love all the stuff on there. But I have to say, even if you are following every one of those things, you are still going to get significant pushback from people when you talk about this issue. Right after the policy. November 2015, the next few months, I received lots of messages from family members who had lost people to suicide recently. And when that story went public, even though I was following every one of those criteria, there was significant pushback about even talking about it. So I don't want that to scare people away from talking about it. Expect pushback, especially when some, you know, suicide is really complicated. It's never just one issue where somebody decides that they are going to attempt suicide. It's multifaceted. But we also know that one of the major reasons people attempt suicide is rejection of some form. So whether they're feeling rejection from family, rejection from church, rejection from their community, there needs to be a little bit of culpability that we talk about that the church has in this. Not 100% at all. I'm not saying that, but it's there. And when we say things like it's the altitude, it's screen time, it's air quality, we're just, we're ignoring what's actually happening. So we should address that. It's, you know, a little bit here. And what we can do as members of the church, whether active, inactive, in or out, to help these kids. Because I'm more worried about the children than I am about being politically correct or seen as saying things the right way. Even within the paradigm. Not the paradigm, the list that Daniel mentioned. It's so important that we're reaching these kids. And right now, the ones that are the most at risk are sitting in our pews on Sunday. So those are the ones that we need to find a way to get to and let them know that they're loved and accepted and valued.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] Beautiful. So hopefully we're going to cover all that today. Austin writes what we're all trying to express how do we create necessary alarm by avoiding all those things, like calling it an epidemic. So Austin is reflecting the challenge of what we're trying to do. We're not trying to alarm, we're not trying to weaponize, we're not trying to spread. But I think Daniel here to not talk about it is there's a form of complicit being complicit just by not talking, right?

Daniel Parkinson [00:15:56] Daniel?

Wendy Montgomery [00:15:57] Right.

Daniel Parkinson [00:15:57] There should be alarm. We need alarm. Okay, we're not saying that, but we just want to discuss it responsibly. And that doesn't mean not discussing it, but that just means trying to take these guidelines that are there, and even if they do slow down the discussion a little bit, let's just follow them, because we don't want to hurt the people we're trying to help. But that nowhere does it say, stop talking about the problem. Nowhere does it say, don't be alarmed that there's a lot of youth suicides. The youth suicides have tripled in 10 years. Those things should be alarming to everybody, but they shouldn't be painted as this is an inevitable outcome for all our LGBT youth. That's different.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] And Jennifer is asking this question, maybe you've already answered it, Daniel. She's saying, why not use the term epidemic? What's the downside of using that term? Daniel?

Daniel Parkinson [00:16:51] I, you know, I didn't develop the guidelines, but I'm, I just want to, I think that when we talk about epidemics, we, it, it's big headline grabbing thing and, and, you know, you become part of it. And I don't want suicidal people, people are feeling suicidal to say, oh, there's this epidemic. And, you know, and to get swept up, want to align with it, get swept up. But I'm guessing I, and that's sort of the philosophy around the other guidelines is that we want the actual suicidal person to not get too closely connected to how they must identify with the suicidal as something, an option for them. We're trying to get away from people thinking, this is, for me, this is the inevitable outcome. I'm a gay Mormon. I don't have other choices. There's this epidemic of gay Mormon suicides. I should, you know, I don't see another choice. I'm going to be part of this epidemic.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] Got it.

Daniel Parkinson [00:17:50] Okay. So to not talk.

John Dehlin [00:17:53] Got it. Talk about it with an intent to educate and inform, not to sort of incite, you know, strong emotions that are sort of overwhelming to people. Maybe.

Daniel Parkinson [00:18:06] Yeah. I mean, we want the right Emotions, I guess. We want people to be concerned and we want people to be focused on the corrective measures, the solutions, both in the lives of the individual and as epidemiological factor. As a state, state, church wide, we're focusing on what can improve things.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Got it. Yeah. Blair writes the phraseology epidemic implies that the risk factors are out of people's control and makes it harder to change things. That's what Blair writes. That's a nice comment, Wendy.

Daniel Parkinson [00:18:38] That's nice. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:39] Were you gonna. Were you gonna add something, Amy or Wendy? I'm sorry, Wendy.

Wendy Montgomery [00:18:44] Oh, no. I agree with everything that Daniel's saying. Epidemic maybe is a strong word, but we need to be having strong conversations around this.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] Yeah.

Wendy Montgomery [00:18:56] You know, we're losing too many. And if we shy away from this conversation, that. That's helping no one.

John Dehlin [00:19:03] Exactly. And I think. And Daniel, I think it's time to actually go and talk about the actual rates. And what I'm going to do for just a second is actually visually share the graph because it's really telling in terms of the trend line. So I'm going to go and show that for a minute. Daniel, why don't you just start talking about the numbers and what the trend has been over the past eight or nine years, and we'll show the graphic for a minute as you start.

Daniel Parkinson [00:19:35] Should we bring Thomas in before we get going further? So.

John Dehlin [00:19:39] Yeah, yeah. His. Thomas. Okay. Thomas has joined us. So. Good. Let me add Thomas really quick to the panel. Hopefully Thomas's microphone will just kind of work. I'll unmute it. Thomas, pull your screen down a little bit. Good. Thomas, can you hear me?

Thomas Montgomery [00:19:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] All right, Introduce yourself really quick, if you don't mind.

Thomas Montgomery [00:19:59] I am Wendy's husband. That's the extent of qualifications, I think.

John Dehlin [00:20:06] And Jordan's father.

Thomas Montgomery [00:20:07] And Jordan's father, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:11] Anything else you want to add?

Thomas Montgomery [00:20:13] Nothing. I think my contribution has just been with Wendy and with Daniel in that we've been pointing to these negative trends for a long time. It's not like this is the kind of coming out of nowhere. We've been speaking on this for three or four years because it's been escalating for eight or nine. So it's not something that's just jumped out of the woodwork.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Parkinson [00:20:45] Tom missed the introduction, but I'll just point out that Tom and Wendy have both been extremely active in the activist community and in different ways. Wendy's done more national media interviews, but Tom's done a lot more writing, and his pieces have reached a really big Audience and among a bunch of other things, but that's kind of how I most work with him.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] Thomas, Daniel's better at introducing you than you are, apparently.

Thomas Montgomery [00:21:12] Yeah, I don't do it too often, so probably is.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] All right, well, thanks for joining us. Okay, Daniel, I'm going to go ahead and switch the screen for a minute to the trend lines. And why don't you start talking about the numbers so that we can just educate the audience?

Utah Youth Suicide Data and Trends

Daniel Parkinson [00:21:28] Yeah, I mean, if you're looking at that graph, it kind of speaks for itself. This is the rate of suicides in age 12 to 21. I grabbed that data from CDC. They actually give you a lot of flexibility in pulling out data, and you can choose any age range. They naturally group them a little bit differently. But I was interested in this group, the age 12 to 21. So this group also just has. What you see here looks horrific, right? Just a rate that just seems to be shooting for the moon here. And I think it's pretty notable that things were just hanging around 10 per 100,000 for a long time. They dropped down for unclear reasons in the, you know, around 2006, but then kind of went back up to that baseline. But since then, in a few short years, they just have. It's just been going up, up, up. And that Trend continued in 2015.

Wendy Montgomery [00:22:33] Can I interrupt for just a sec, please?

Daniel Parkinson [00:22:35] Yeah.

Wendy Montgomery [00:22:36] I'm looking at this graph, and I'm hoping that the people that are listening or watching are able to see this. Don't just see lines on a graph that they recognize that these are people. These are 12 to 21. These are our children. Like, look at that and think of how many people that represents that are no longer with us. Like, humanize this a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Yeah. Thank you, Wendy. And what it doesn't show is absolute number of deaths sort of per year. This is.

Daniel Parkinson [00:23:04] I could have put that, too, but I wanted to compare it to the US Rate. And as you see that line, the US Rate is a lot lower than Utah. And so, I mean, once again, when we talk about exact numbers, we wonder if we're getting in that problem areas that we discussed and things to avoid. But we can see that the rate is unacceptably high.

Thomas Montgomery [00:23:28] If you want to talk about the altitude, Utah is always been higher, like mountain. That's what they talk about in the mountain states. It's elevated. You can see the 10. You know, it hovers around 10 nationals between around 7, but it's always higher. But what we're talking about is this spike right Just gone through the roof.

John Dehlin [00:23:53] And there are listeners who won't know that. What we're referring to with altitude is basically a few years ago, I think a well intended apologist, Mormon apologist, wrote a blog post that actually got picked up that basically said maybe, you know, maybe there were some data, some correlational data that suggested that the altitude was the cause or was correlated with the suicidality.

Daniel Parkinson [00:24:18] Well, altitude is correlated with suicidality. That's not, that's proven. Right. That's not the problem. The problem is, you know, the suicide experts at the University of Utah who were, you know, publicizing that information, didn't have bad intentions in publicizing it. That's one of the things we gotta look at. We gotta look at everything. But it just doesn't explain altitude, just does nothing to explain a change in suicide rate. And since we noticed this one year ago, that's how long we realized there was an escalating rate. And then the discussion of altitude becomes meaningless further.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] Got it.

Daniel Parkinson [00:24:59] But people keep pointing to that and people keep bringing up every single time we put out an article about the suicide rate, they say, well, it's because of the altitude. And if you stop and think for just a second, you'll have to realize the altitude didn't triple. We aren't as high as Everest. We are still just, you know, at our 5,000ft. So.

John Dehlin [00:25:18] Yep, okay. And just to kind of extend. It's not just youth, you know, just youth. So let's talk about that second graph on the blog post too.

Daniel Parkinson [00:25:31] Yeah. As you can see, the adults, we don't have this, the same alarming spike. You can see that the adults, which is 22 to 49, so we're still talking. It's still pretty tragic. These suicides are, they're, you know, and we're seeing the same phenomena. The national rate, instead of being closer to 10 for the teens, is 15. So yeah, it's higher. And our baseline was around 20, which was higher. But now we've managed to double, nearly double the national rate with our adults. And so we can't, you know, it's not just the youth. The youth, as you saw the spike in the youth is much more dramatic and much more horrifying. But really, both of both, all the groups are nearly doubling. Well, the youth are doubling, are more than doubling the national rate, but the adults are also nearly doubling the national rate. And that's concerning. Right, and it's concerning because it's new. You know, when you say, oh, it's the western US we're not seeing this kind of change anywhere else except for, to some extent, Colorado and Idaho.

John Dehlin [00:26:41] And Colorado and Idaho have a lot of Mormons. Colorado and Idaho have quite a bit of Mormons. Is that true?

Daniel Parkinson [00:26:46] Yeah. And I, you know, I don't want to say that theirs is going up for the same reason or different reason. I don't think we know that. I think, you know, I'm sure if you have opponents to marijuana, they're going to say, well, it's because of marijuana in Colorado. I mean, it's, we don't know what is that exactly. That would make Utah and Colorado have an escalating rate that we're not seeing in Arizona or the. And then the small states like Montana and Wyoming, you don't have enough data to really make sense of what's going on there. Idaho, the numbers are terrible in Idaho. I mean, really, really amazingly terrible there too. So, I mean, those states should also be really, really horrified at what's going on. But it's certainly not a nationwide phenomena. It's certainly not even a western phenomena. There might be some slow growth in suicide and there certainly is in older groups like the above 50. Yeah, it's pretty clear that there's a increased suicide throughout our country, especially on the west coast of people over 50. And that's not really noticeable in Utah. But the young people were seeing the growth. And it's, it's, you know, you can just look and say, oh, it started right there in 2008 with the adults and in the youth you can see it also kind of jumping up there. But there you're really seeing it going up in 2011 with the youth. And I guess I should mention that the recently Desert News published a different set of numbers. I just know about those numbers, but they showed somewhat of an improvement in the youth rate in 2016, which we don't have numbers for. So I don't know about that because I really can't say how Utah gets its numbers compared to the cdc. But we do know that they ignore important groups when they're griefing them to suicides because they don't necessarily group it as a suicide if, unless it could be kind of proven it's a suicide, which doesn't really grab a vast majority of the types of suicides that are actually taking the lives of so many. So I can't speak to that. And I kind of wish there was someone on the panel who could, who could tell us about that.

Wendy Montgomery [00:29:09] I can speak a little bit, I can speak a little bit to, like, where the numbers are coming from what they, what the Utah Department of Health and CDC consider suicide and what they don't. I've talked to some people over there and because of their criteria, we will never have accurate numbers ever because they only consider currently three methods of death suicide, unless there's a note and there's rarely suicide notes. And those methods are self inflicted gunshot wound, asphyxiation by hanging and poison. And poison does not include ODing. That would be like drinking bleach or something. So the most common types of suicide are some type of a drug or pill overdose. You can do things like, you know, jumping off a bridge or. Right. You know, driving your car into a tree. All of those things they consider accidental death. So we're never going to have accurate numbers. I've talked with and it's.

Daniel Parkinson [00:30:03] And might I add that for example, the overdoses is, you know, a huge number, right? Yeah, that's right.

Wendy Montgomery [00:30:11] And I've talked with a few policemen, one in Ogden in particular, that were first on scene at an obvious suicide. And the parents there begged the police officers to write accidental death on the police report rather than suicide because they didn't want that stigma for their, their child. And but these policemen, I've asked them to talk about it or go on record and they won't because they'll lose their job for falsifying police, police records. And the numbers that people have reached out to me and I've collected or Daniel or other people I know, Deborah Ko works a lot on this as well. A lot of those people consider anecdotal evidence, you know, a story from parents or a schoolteacher that had a student or. And I realize that those are anecdotal. But talking with Phil Rogers about a year and a half ago, he works for the afsp, which is the American foundation of Suicide Prevention. He said he worked. He worked. Yeah, he since passed away. But he told me, he says keep collecting all of that anecdotal, those stories because at some point anecdotal evidence becomes what he calls a preponderance of evidence and is statistically valid. So we may be, it may be a combination of CDC numbers and Department of Health numbers. Those people down on the ground that are like talking with people, maybe a combination of all of them, but I don't know if we will ever have accurate numbers that match theirs.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Got it.

Daniel Parkinson [00:31:37] But the trends, but whatever they're doing, the trend is very visible, right.

Wendy Montgomery [00:31:43] And escalating.

Correlates and Causes of the Crisis

John Dehlin [00:31:47] So I think it's time to start talking about correlates to the suicide but that's tricky because we just got through reading guidelines that basically say, be really careful about ascribing blame to people's suicide. And we started by saying any suicide is a multifaceted act that can have many factors contributing, including life circumstances, maybe genetics, maybe someone's personal mental health, family situations. Who knows what the many factors are? So those of us who are frustrated with the LDS Church's policies would want to just say, like many did at this past general conference, that the church has blood on its hands. So how do we talk about possible causes without violating the rules we just got through reading? Who wants to dive into.

Daniel Parkinson [00:32:50] I mean, would it be too far off topic if we. I just kind of reviewed the events that Wendy, Tom and I kind of experienced last year when this kind of all came to light, because it tells a narrative that in a way, points out the pathology around how the discussion goes. And Wendy should be ready to correct me. But last year, after the policy, there was just a huge amount of despair. Right. So we have always suspected the suicides were higher, but we didn't have really a good set of data on that. Last year, after the policy, as Wendy discussed, she started getting reports of suicide. So we started getting a lot of anecdotes. And I just wanted to make this public. What went down with that? Because we're still getting pushback around that. A year later, Wendy reported those numbers to an audience, that leadership of Affirmation. Right. She just said, you know, it was just a conversation.

Wendy Montgomery [00:33:55] It was just a conversation with John Gustav Rathel and I, and he wrote a paper about the Affirmation Conference of California and mentioned it. So that's because I wasn't sure what to do with those numbers. Do I go public? Like, I, you know, I was. Didn't want to cause further suicides by talking about it, but so that's how that kind of went about.

Daniel Parkinson [00:34:16] So it kind of came out and people were alarmed. Oh, my gosh, this is horrible. And so there was this big wave of Internet frenzy. And unfortunately, anytime the discussion goes out.

John Dehlin [00:34:25] Yeah.

Daniel Parkinson [00:34:26] Then a lot of people out there are not obeying the rules. Right. They are talking about it in an unhealthy way. And so then that starts even some of our allies pushing back or even some of our own team basically criticizing people like Wendy who didn't really publicize the number. All she did was just mention it to someone who mentioned it to someone else, and it kind of became public knowledge. But then something kind of really bad went down, which was how the Tribune Reported it because the Tribune, who normally is helpful, I think, decided to publish a comment from Wendy and that number. But then they totally undermined it by saying, without any explanation, that the state of Utah says There's only been 10 suicides in that time, which already is wrong. But they just didn't give us any chance. They didn't ask Wendy, they didn't ask somebody like me to say, well, why is there a difference in these numbers? And there's obvious a series of reasons why there would be a disparity, but they didn't bother to talk about that. They just use that. Just, they just put it out there. And that was immediate. Used to just undermine every, you know, thing Wendy had talked about and was noticing. And what a lot of us who are working in the realm are noticing is that there is a lot of despair and there is more suicides. And so, you know, this was kind of upsetting to me to see the, to see how that came down and see how that was reported in such a way that was so unhelpful. And then to see, you know, then we have everyone jumping on the bandwagon about the altitude and it's not a problem. And we now have the Mama Dragons debunked. It wasn't even the Mama Dragons. It was just a number that Wendigate. But we. And they failed to mention that all these other people, even like Natasha who works, who, you know, does another pod podcast affiliated with Mormon Stories, she noticed it in her practice. I mean, practitioners were noticing it and people in emergency rooms were noticing it. It wasn't just, it was just a lot of, you know, we can say anecdotes, but these are well founded anecdotes. And, and so at that point I got with Michael Barker, who runs the Rational Face blog. And so I put out the, the arguments I had, you know, the points I had as to why I see it as being a big problem affecting lgbt. And so that's kind of what got me investigating. Putting a lot of research into why, you know, between me and Michael and then Benjamin Null kind of joined the team and he gave more statistical analysis of what was going on. And everything just says, yeah, there's a big problem. And we don't know the exactness of it, we don't know all the details, but we can sure as heck say, yes, there is a huge problem that we just need to put some attention on. And thankfully the Deseret News treated us nicely and they've subsequently reported a few times about how it is a problem and how. And they've even the most recent article not long ago, pointed out that they just presented it as the fact that it is, that suicide is a problem for our LGBT teens. So I'm grateful for that response. And I usually happy with the Tribune, but in this case, it wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:37:55] Okay, that's great backstory. And it's so tricky. It's just so tricky when you're trying to be a part of the solution. You're trying to just educate, and then everybody comes down and assaults you. Wendy, do you want to talk a bit about what that's like and how you cope with that? And Thomas, you can. You can respond after Wendy.

Wendy Montgomery [00:38:19] Sure. Yeah. I was pleasantly surprised that the Desert News handled that as well as they did. It wasn't a perfect article, but it was really, for a church's newspaper, it was really pretty good. It was incredibly difficult. We get because we've been as public, and I think maybe because of the film on our family. We get messages all the time, sometimes as many as a hundred a week from gay Mormons, their parents, family members, many of them just heartbreaking, talking about suicidal ideation and some attempts. But far and away the most gut wrenching are the people that reached out to me about the people that they lost to suicide. And they just want somebody to hear them and to validate their pain and their grief. And it's. I have to say that it's both a sacred honor for me that they trust me with, with that, you know, that intimate part of their family. But also it was just devastating to be the witness of so many. I literally felt like I was in a war zone. I mean, dozens of people in just months. If this was happening in any other community, if there was a serial killer out there killing this many people, if there was some type of a disease, the communities that was happening would be up in arms and they would be doing everything they could to fix it. But in the case of it being a gay or trans person. Oh, well, it's just sad. Sorry. There's not much we're going to do about it. We're not going to talk about it. And when people do talk about it, we're going to engage in character assassination. We're going to make it every other possible reason than some of the reasons that it could be happening. And I think, I hope somebody at some point can do some type of, like a correlation between the escalation in church rhetoric around traditional family proclamation on the family against gay people and track the numbers. That would be a Very interesting thing to see, because we watched those numbers jump in 2008 around Proposition 8, and we see spikes every time something really awful happens. The policy, I think, was maybe one of the biggest spikes yet. So I'm not laying all of this at the feet of the church for responsibility, but there definitely is culpability there, you know, And I'm just watching this complete and utter devastation of a community that I love with my whole heart. And it's deeply personal for us because our own son spent about a year being very suicidal, to the point where I slept on the floor in his room some nights, and I hid pills and I hid knives, and I was worried every day to even leave him alone. And then I hear so many stories of people going through similar things. Every one of them feels like my son. We've lost people that are close to us, people that feel like family, and there's just. There's no recovering from it. It's just painful all the time, you know? And I also just want to throw out that everything I'm saying is I am not representing affirmation. I'm not representing mama dragons. This is just my own personal knowledge and experience with this. But when all that went down, the articles started coming out the end of January 2016. So a few months after the policy, and we literally were getting just crucified. I received some death threats for what we were doing to the point where we just. I really just backed off of all of it. It was just too difficult to keep doing that because, you know, we're trying to keep kids alive, and people are, you know, really hostile and harsh about it.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] I'm so sorry, Wendy. Thomas, do you want to add anything to what Wendy's been saying about the complexities of trying to talk about causes of this issue? And I'll unmute you really quick, Thomas. Okay, go ahead.

Thomas Montgomery [00:42:14] It is complex, but it's not just anecdotal. The one wonderful thing about the article that Daniel did with Michael Barker is they consolidated a lot of information that's in a lot of different places. They have the anecdotal, but they also include what is in there as direct evidence and indirect evidence. The direct evidence we have is that LGBT kids are directly impacted by rejection and rejecting families. That's the work that comes out of the Family Acceptance Project. It's pretty clear that rejecting families on an exponential scale increase all the risk factors for kids, including suicide, homelessness, risky

John Dehlin [00:43:06] sexual behavior, drug use.

Thomas Montgomery [00:43:07] Yeah, all of the negative things you don't want your kid going into can be caused directly by rejecting behaviors of the parents.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] And Thomas, tell us. And Daniel, Wendy, you can jump in. Tell us, Thomas, what are some of the classic rejecting behaviors so that people know what that means to reject your

Thomas Montgomery [00:43:25] kid, Denying that your kid's gay, saying that they're, you know, it's. It's ssa. It's something that can be overcome if you just work and pray hard enough. Not letting them associate with anyone else that's gay, putting them into therapy to fix them from being gay. I mean, and quite honestly, just a lot of basic homophobia, you know, gay jokes, things that are. A kid internalizes, as I've heard my dad say, gay jokes or ranting about Prop 8 or ranting about gay people and same sex marriage. They're the enemy. You've got an April Ensign 2017 article talking about the war against Satan, including against same sex marriage, counterfeit worthless marriages. A kid hearing those things internalizes that as they're just coming to grips with, you know, puberty and finding that they're attracted to the wrong people and they're internalizing already that their parents are gonna reject them, their religion's gonna reject them, and they're on the outside and they either bury that or if they come out, they could face consequences. I think one of the strongest indirect evidences is the homelessness in Utah. I think Ogden Outreach center has statistics that the kids that come through their center, upwards of half of them are lgbt. And yet in the population, we're talking about the incidence of LGBT being like around 5 to 10% at the most. And yet half of the kids through the homeless shelter are lgbt. It's a massive sign that there is a huge level of rejection in Utah that LGBT kids face. That's not anecdotal anymore.

John Dehlin [00:45:41] So, Daniel, would you add anything to Thomas's list of rejecting behaviors that families and church and friends can contribute to?

Daniel Parkinson [00:45:50] I think that's pretty good. I think that, you know, the negative comments that we have to realize that people don't realize they're doing these rejecting behaviors. The list of rejecting behaviors are things that people just routinely do and don't consider them rejecting. Mormons sometimes aren't always so good at knowing, you know, what, what their rejecting behaviors are when it comes to someone they don't see as living their every, you know, commandment the way they think they should. And so, yes, by criticizing gays in general, you're rejecting your child that you don't know is gay by not allowing, by having a big stink about that There's A gay character and Beauty and the Beast and posting on your Facebook that this is horrible, that's rejecting your gay child without realizing it. When you say that, you know, gays are horrible because they want gay marriage, then you're rejecting your gay child. When you, it becomes more direct when you, once you realize your child is gay. And then, yeah, you do the things that they said, like not letting them identify themselves as they wish or as they see themselves, or not letting them associate with gay people or not letting them have any positive role models or pathologies, punishing them, pathologizing it. And so, yeah, those are all on the list of rejecting behaviors. I think it's really helpful to go over the list of Family Acceptance Project because they put a really nice summary there. And going to the to our listeners,

John Dehlin [00:47:31] I just posted the link to the Family Acceptance Project in the feed. It's familyproject sfsu edu. Dr. Caitlin Ryan is the head of the Family Acceptance Project. And again, highly rejected LGBT youth will be three times more likely to engage in risky drug use, risky sexual behavior, and, and eight times more likely to attempt suicide if they're highly rejected by their family. Is that the statistic? Daniel Did I get that right?

Daniel Parkinson [00:48:01] Can I just pause? Daniel then Wendy okay, well, Wendy go first.

John Dehlin [00:48:08] Okay.

Daniel Parkinson [00:48:08] Wendy Okay.

Wendy Montgomery [00:48:10] I just wanted to add, as far as we're talking about the Family Acceptance Project, her work has the gold seal from the afsp, which is the American foundation of Suicide Prevention, one of the best tools out there for suicide prevention, and it is the only tool out there for faith based suicide prevention. And we LDS people, we're fortunate enough that it's for our faith that she started with our faith. And it's also a little bit of a condemnation of our faith because we needed it the most, which is why she started with the Mormons rather than any other religion. But it's the best where we have keeping our kids alive. Another thing that's excellent, especially for very conservative traditional Mormon families of who I was before our son came out, is it shows you how to love and support your LGBT child and still hold on to your faith. Because for so many of us parents, it feels like either or you choose your child or your church, you can't have both. And Caitlin's work, the brilliance of it is it shows you how to have both if that's the path you want to take.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] So to accept your LGBT Mormon youth, it doesn't mean you have to just let all sorts of unhealthy things happen all the time all around, right?

Daniel Parkinson [00:49:27] You can, Caitlin talks about there's a range, you can go from highly rejecting to medium rejecting and you're already going to improve the risk. So any Mormon, even if they don't buy into everything she's saying, can benefit by adopting at least some of them. And I do want to point out that if you go to the website, they have a pamphlet that's specifically written by LDS people. It was written by, with the help of Robert Reese, Dr. Robert Reese, who had served as a Mormon bishop. And it's really for a Mormon audience. I do want to point out that when they're asked to download it, they're asked to give an email email. And this is just so they will send them one and one only survey that's totally optional. And so I'm just encouraging people to not be scared to get their email to get the copy that brochure because it's really worth it. And they'll see that in the publications section. But what I wanted to also talk about when you mentioned the three times risk of HIV infection, the three times risk of drug abuse that accompanies the rejecting families, I just want to point out that one, these ideas around rejection also apply to non gay people. Right. They're good ideas for any of your children. And a lot of Mormons have children who might, for other reasons, appear to be straying from the path and they might also be at risk, higher risk of suicide. And if you just sort of take these same ideas and work with your children in a way to, you know, encourage them to do what you think is best, but at the same time avoid rejection, you're going to help save their lives. But the main thing I wanted to say about all this is that the going back to what we talked about in the guidelines for discussing suicide, there is not just one thing that leads to suicide. There is, it's kind of like the Titanic. A lot of bad things come together at the wrong time in the wrong place. And what those are the risk factors and the different risk factors, they add up in any one individual. So if you have the risk factor of having a family history of major depression, obviously there's going to be a higher risk of depression. And therefore depression is clearly a risk factor for suicide. If you use drugs or alcohol, there's another risk factor. If you had a family commit suicide within the past year, then you're a higher risk. So anyone who has these risk factors, they're going to add up and you're going to. When you want to prevent suicides, you want to Try to modulate the risks as best you can. So, yeah, let's not blame it on any one issue, but let's do take this one issue about rejection and realize that it impacts several of the risk factors. Because we know that drug and alcohol use is a risk factor for suicide, but family rejection becomes a risk factor for using the drugs and alcohol in the first place. The risk for suicide is augmented with depression. But we know that having lack of family and community supports is a big risk factor for depression. These things all kind of do a dance together. The drug use, the HIV infection, the depression, the suicide, the. They are doing a dance with the risk factors that the biggest one we can help with is the rejection that they receive from the people around them, from their communities. And I would say the family is the most important. The community and the church are shortly after that. But then once again, there's a dance because the community impacts how the family behaves. The church impacts how each family behaves. So the fact that, yeah, the LGBT person might be rejected at church by the things they're hearing from church leaders, but also when the church leader says something, rejecting the families might be parroting that or that might give them license to say nay to things about LGBT people, which will then go on and be, you know, make the child feel more rejected by their family. So all these things, it's an interaction. It's a web. And so, no, no, there's not just one thing that makes someone suicidal, but there is certainly one thing that makes a lot of their risk factors go up. And then if you add into the fact that just the community baseline, the altitude, you know, yeah, we've all got the altitude, so we all have that risk factor. So let's not give us more. We, you know, a certain set of people are going to be using drugs or experiencing depression unrelated to any of this.

Risk Factors and the November Policy

Wendy Montgomery [00:54:34] But.

Daniel Parkinson [00:54:34] But let's not give them another risk factor that's totally preventable. Right? And so, yeah, we don't want to simplify it. And in any one case, it's never just one thing, but let's lower the risk factors that we can impact.

John Dehlin [00:54:56] 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 by the Lower Lights.

Wendy Montgomery [00:55:24] Any good?

Daniel Parkinson [00:55:30] I draw myself apart Searching my soul.

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 722

John Dehlin [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.

Wendy Montgomery [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom

Daniel Parkinson [00:00:43] Lead

Wendy Montgomery [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark.

The Whiplash Effect on LGBT Mormons

John Dehlin [00:00:49] So, given that this is so complicated, we've already started talking about. I mean, this is obviously, this conversation's happening within a Mormon and LDS context. I think it would be silly to say there's no association between the dramatic spike in suicides in Utah and, you know, the church's involvement of Proposition 8 and what's gone on between 2008 and now. So why don't we just go around the panel and what are each of you comfortable saying about what you think, what you're seeing as contributors to this high spike? What are you guys comfortable saying about that? If you're comfortable saying anything at all, Wendy, we'll start with you, then Thomas, then Daniel.

Wendy Montgomery [00:01:37] Well, what I feel very comfortable saying is it's the whiplash that's hard. You know, just this past month or so, the church put out the video with the McIntosh family that I was surprised even to see the church's logo at the end. They went so far. I mean, the father talk about that.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] Talk about that video.

Wendy Montgomery [00:01:59] Okay, I love that the father apologized for some of his hurtful, homophobic things that he had said to his son or about a son, probably before he knew that his son was gay. The mom talked about having to come to terms with her son leaving the church and dating people of the same gender, and that that was difficult. But what she came to at the end was just love. We just love. And that's what the Savior teaches us to do. And it was the most beautiful, the most inclusive, the most lovely video I have seen the church do. And I loved it because Becky and Scott McIntosh talked from the point of view of their child, has left the church, and this is how we still love him and include him and keep him in our family, which that is what, speaking as a parent of a gay kid, 90% of the people that I know that have gay children or even gay people themselves leave the church. So that should have been one of the first videos on Mormon and Gay, because that is the majority of what's happening. So let's address that. I was so happy to see that come out. I know a lot of people look at that like maybe it was a PR stunt. I have no idea the intentions behind it. All I know is that that video gives other parents permission to love and accept their child. What was difficult was three or four days later, an Ensign article comes out called the War Rages on that Tom mentioned. And the language that was used was counterfeit worthless talking about same sex marriage. And when we see a video as lovely as the Macintoshes was, you can't help but start to hope that maybe things are going to get better. Maybe this is a tiny corner that's being turned. And, you know, the other thing that should be mentioned is that the Macintosh video will only be seen by people that go to mormonandgay.org or maybe they have a friend that posted on Facebook. It's only going to be seen by people looking for information on that topic. The Ensign goes into every active Mormon home out there so that message of counterfeit worthless will be heard much longer and much louder than the Macintosh video was. So it's the whiplash. It's the I'm getting a little bit of hope and then I get dashed again, you know? And that happened a couple years ago in Utah, where SB 296 was passed. There were three apostles there at the signing of that bill. And then a couple weeks later, Elder Perry gave his talk on counterfeit marriage. It's the whip. I think it's the back and forth. It would almost be easier if the church's intolerance was similar to, like the Westboro Baptist, where the hate coming from them is a known quantity. We don't expect anything. We're not hoping. But it's the constant hoping and then getting thrown back that is devastating.

John Dehlin [00:04:46] Did that happen at this most recent General Conference that you guys are aware where some affirming but some not so affirming things were said even at the April 2017 general conference. Do you guys know?

Wendy Montgomery [00:04:58] Well, I didn't watch it, but I saw all over social media and got lots of texts. Elder Holland's talk was amazing. He even specifically used a line about everyone being welcome in church, including those of varying sexual attractions. And he said it in kind of an emphatic way. I heard Uchtdorf's talk was amazing. I haven't heard of any that were awful, but, you know, to be fair, I didn't watch any of it.

Daniel Parkinson [00:05:21] Yeah, I didn't hear of any negative talk. So I mean, that's, that's nice. We had a general conference where there was really nothing directly stated. I mean there was, you know, people said there was some fear based talk that made them imply, but no one could point anything direct. Meanwhile, we did get a positive, a couple of positive things. So that was nice. The McIntosh video. So, you know, I'm hoping that this inside article becomes the rarity. Or maybe it's just some holdout or maybe it's some editor that puts some minor. I don't remember who wrote the editor. Was the inside article an apostle or was that. Who wrote that? So I'm hoping it was just. Yeah, so I'm just hoping it wasn't something that they really. That was intentional, you know, that they're bringing back kind of the negative rhetoric. We heard, you know, a year ago a really awful thing stated by,

John Dehlin [00:06:20] by

Daniel Parkinson [00:06:20] Bednar where he just said that there aren't any gay Mormons. That was kind of not helpful.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] How do you guys make sense of that whiplash of that almost bipolarity? Is it that, you know, I know we're speculating, but that's because we don't get candid comments from those inside. Is it that, you know, that people disagree? Is it that you're just getting individual people's opinions? Is it the church is split on this issue? Is it that they're trying to play to both sides and be able to have plausible deniability, to kind of speak to the conservative base but also speak to the liberal base? And you do that by speaking to both simultaneously. How do we make sense of that whiplash or bipolarity? Anybody want to take a stabilizer?

Wendy Montgomery [00:07:13] I firmly believe that the leadership at the very top is split on this issue. So you'll get beautiful inclusive talks from Holland, from Uchtdorf, and then you'll get talks from, you know, Bednar and Nelson that are just. That just slam you back down. I feel like there's quite a split up there.

John Dehlin [00:07:30] But so maybe Oakes, Nelson, Bednar on the not so affirming side. Maybe Christofferson, Holland and. And Uchtdorf on the more affirming side.

Wendy Montgomery [00:07:42] I also think Rasband and Renlund are way more affirming than we know them to be publicly.

John Dehlin [00:07:48] Yeah, I actually received a transcript of a conversation with Terryl Givens recently and Terrell Givens said that he knows for a fact that the apostles are split on this issue. And he's denounced the December 2015 policy as a huge mistake. And we've been hearing that from the very start that the apostles were split, that the way that the December 2015 policy came down did not reflect unanimity in the quorum. I think that's pretty, pretty widely accepted at this point.

Wendy Montgomery [00:08:24] I'm just hoping that now that it's not a very well kept secret that they are split on this issue, that some of the 12 will come out and say, I mean, in a kind, loving way, not slam the other members of their quorum, but just say, I don't agree with this, we need to figure this out.

John Dehlin [00:08:42] Thomas, in addition to what Wendy described as the whiplash effect, what are you able to attribute to sort of responsibility for the Mormon Church on these, on the suicide spike? And then Daniel will ask you the same question.

Thomas Montgomery [00:08:57] So I point to the theology when I look at a kid coming up through primary, all their ideals built through church are about. Going up through the priesthood for a boy, becoming a missionary. Everything talks about family, family, family and starting a family. And it's a core part of the doctrine. And so, you know, 11, 12, 13 year old kid starts coming into puberty and they start recognizing that they're attracted to the wrong people and they start immediately going through. And Daniel talked about rejection of family, community, church. The rejection of God is right up there at the top because suddenly they don't fit anything in the plan. And it's not like there's any outlined plan B for them to latch onto to say, I still have worth, because suddenly they're not going to fit in an eternal. They don't even know if they fit in their own eternal family. And they can't marry in the way that people want them to marry, their parents, their church, that they think God wants them to do in order to be right before God. So you have a massive level of rejection framed in the doctrine by itself where they're gonna go. And it's been intensified since Prop 8 because it's not just Prop 8, it's the proclamation on the family and the rhetoric in inside church, from the pulpit, from the pews, in general Conference that has been hammered home for the last 10 years. You see the correlation and all of those spikes of the suicide starting around 2008, 2009. But Prop 8 is just the tip of the iceberg. It's like last year, Wendy was telling me that the Relief Society message every month that the visiting teachers brought was on proclamation of the family, which by exclusion completely eliminates LGBT people. And so you have a kid experiencing this at a very fundamental age 12 to 14, where they're coming into knowing who they're attracted to, realizing they don't fit in this theology anymore, and not having anywhere to go. There's no. Truly, what they're left with is celibacy, which is the loss of everything the church holds it on. The highest standard of temple marriage is completely unavailable to them. Hammered home by the November policy that if they even go that way, they will be branded an apostate and kicked out of the church. And if you don't think the kids are aware of this, they are, absolutely. Especially as they're hitting puberty and realizing they're listening to every word coming out of the church that impacts them. And so the level of loss, this is what Caitlin Ryan has mentioned to me many times. The level of loss that LGBT people coming out of the church feel is greater than in any other religion, any other group she's ever come across. Because their theology, they lose it all and that future is completely gone for them. And of course, with the rhetoric being spiked over the last 10 years, I think there's a direct pair of parallel.

John Dehlin [00:13:07] Yeah, it's tricky because the Book of Mormon is silent on same sex sexuality. The Doctrine and Covenants is silent on same sex sexuality. Joseph Smith was silent. And so for the church to actually change, you know, to talk about this in terms of its theology, they would really need a new revelation. And the Brethren since Joseph Smith have been really gun shy and actually playing the role of prophet, seer and revelator. And so I can see why it's tricky because there's just no precedent. The only precedent we have is Spencer W. Kimball and Boyd K. Packer all calling same sex sexuality perversion, evil, satanic, sinful. And so it feels like the Brethren are kind of in a corner on that. Thomas.

Thomas Montgomery [00:13:55] Well, if I could segue to, you know, there was an article that came out last month.

Community Responses and Online Reactions

John Dehlin [00:14:01] Wait, Thomas, really quick, before we do that, I want to get Daniel in, so hold that thought. Daniel, just one second. I'm just going to bring in a couple of comments from listeners. Several people say Amen. Wendy. The Macintosh video needs wider distribution. I've posted a link to the Macintosh video in the live stream. We have over 100 people tuned in. If 100 people went and posted that video now, it would cause sort of like a real uptick on social media. So I want to encourage everybody to just go and copy that link, paste it on their timeline right now, and we'll see a spike in distribution of that video. A couple other comments. Matthew Turner basically says that there's A good cop, bad cop dynamic going on where some GA's are positive, some are negative. And that way it can not only accurately reflect the division amongst the leadership, but it can also play to both sides. Matthew also writes that in his opinion, Christofferson's talk was very harsh. So I didn't hear that talk. I don't know what he's referring to, but that would sort of, again, say that Hollands or Uchtdorfs may have been positive. But then Christoffersen was harsh. And I just have to wonder if Christopherson said something harsh. How does that work with his brother Tom? I just wonder what those conversations are like.

Daniel Parkinson [00:15:28] Thompson didn't address LGBT issues, so it just felt like a harsh talk to people. But it wasn't that he was specific about lgbt.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] Okay, that's good to know. So thanks for that clarification. All right, so those are some of the comments coming in. Daniel, if you were to answer this question about to what extent we can make an association between what the church does and, and these suicides, what are you comfortable saying? And I think we have to note, can it be a coincidence that all this started in 2008, that the uptick starts in 2008 when the church gets involved so heavily in Proposition 8?

Daniel Parkinson [00:16:07] Right. That's just what jumped out at me was that this, we did see this escalation start to happen when the rhetoric started happening. And I, I don't know if it's exactly church policy. I prefer to try to work on things that I can might be able to impact. So I decided to put my energies in trying to reach parents. And so I think that we can make a difference at a grassroots level right now. And just for example, by sharing the Macintosh video. What Tom and Wendy did initially was really pioneering on that when they were, well, they were earlier pioneers, but they were, you know, they gave a big advance in the cause when they did their video with the Family Acceptance Project, which once also gave an example of how a Mormon family could respond. We, me and a team of people liked it so much that we decided to make a bunch of videos not exactly like that, but we did the LDS Walk with youh project, which featured videos of parents who were active LDs who accepted and talked about how they accepted their LGBT child and came across that. So what, what we were focusing on, what the Montgomery's have tried to down. I'll do all this here. What I've tried to do is try to create. And even what you've tried to do is try to create a change in our culture to where you can be an active, believing LDS person. And we really strongly believe this, that the best thing for our gay youth would be to have active LDs people who were supportive to them and who understand their situation and who get it. And I think that projects like that are helping with that. But we also think it's, you know, we also think we are making projects progress. We do think that our society is changing and including our Mormon society. And I'm hoping that we'll see better numbers because of that. I think that I'm hoping that these. The spike we've been having is in part because it's just put things have come to the front of the forefront. And I'm really hoping that with a little more time and a little more improvement at the level of the community, at the level of your everyday Mormon, that we can start seeing the suicides go down even if the church does not decide to make a change. My second point though is that I think that when the grassroots things happen, we will see the church leaders follow. And so maybe these improvements we are seeing are actually because, yeah, we're getting a zeitgeist within the Mormon community and that's impacting the church leaders. My third point is there are little things they could do to make things a lot better. They could just add a sentence or two in the family proclamation on the family to just make it somehow more inclusive and just somehow give a direction for people who can't fit into this scheme, which doesn't just mean the gay people, it means the straight people who for other reasons can't get married or divorce or from broken families or, you know, a million other things that make them not fit in the proclamation? I think there's things that the church can do that don't require that much doctrinal change. So I'm kind of hoping that, you know, I'd love them to get a revelation right now saying that, yeah, we can have, you know, seedings for saint psychology. But I know that's not going to happen. And if it does, it's going to be a long ways away. But a lot of other things can happen that would improve things drastically.

John Dehlin [00:19:41] Okay, really quick. I just want to note. Kimberly Anderson writes that she does not like the Macintosh family video and she refuses to share it. I had another friend say that it made him sick inside. Can anyone just quickly comment on why some don't like that video? Do any of you have any of you heard people's perspective on why that might not be the best video I

Wendy Montgomery [00:20:04] think that some people hate it or dislike it strongly because the current stance of the church is against much of what's said in that video, which it feels a little bit like, I don't know, institutional schizophrenia, where some people are going to come and have like this great experience. Most people won't. The Macintosh story is, I don't think it's as common as we wished it would be. You know, people are very rejecting because of the messages at the top. So. And the policy is still in place. So you have this video from the Macintosh, which I loved because I knew it was going to give parents, very active Mormon parents, permission to love and accept their child. I like that part. But with the policy still in place, where do you go with that? Even if you have a wonderful, affirming bishop and stake president that wants you there, the policy is a handcuff for them. Unless they're willing to go out against the top leaders of the church and go rogue to be fully inclusive and loving of you. They can't. They can't because of the policy. So it feels like one side of the church is saying great things, the other side is saying awful things. And it's like, so who's, who's driving this train? You know, where's it going? So I get, I mean, I get, and I totally validate the people that find it hard to watch, that don't like it, that don't want to share it 100%. But you know, for me, in my position and my perspective, I just want to keep these kids safe. That's what it is for me. Like, I really don't care about a lot of the politics behind it. I just want these kids to be loved and accepted in their homes. And that video can help with that.

John Dehlin [00:22:00] Got it.

Daniel Parkinson [00:22:01] I totally agree with that and I think the video is very helpful. And if you are of the opinion that the only thing you can do for your gay child is to leave the church right away, whether or not that's true, that's not going to be helpful for the youth who are most at risk. The youth who are most at risk need a message like the Macintoshes. So whether or not it's the true story of Mormonism or whether or not it's the very, very best thing that can happen. This is something that will make a difference in the lives of real people who are out there. Because we aren't going to have, you know, 15 year old kid, his parents aren't going to leave the church just from one day to the next, just because he found out his kid's gay. And so they need an example like the Macintoshes.

John Dehlin [00:22:47] And so, yeah, that makes sense. And I don't. It's always tricky because we try and help make change happen. And yet sometimes we're so angry that even when a positive step forward is made, we have the tendency to want to say it's not good enough and to maybe just never acknowledge when a good thing happens. I'm just going to read two quick comments. Cody writes, as someone who is gay, the impression I got from the Macintosh video is that what more of how parents can cope with having a gay child rather than celebrating the uniqueness of that child. And in that way, the video falls short. So Cody's sort of saying, parents are holding their nose, okay, I've got this gay child, and so how do I cope with it versus just saying? I think like Wendy, you and Thomas do, my kid is brilliant. And being gay is part of their brilliance. Scott writes.

Daniel Parkinson [00:23:44] Becky and Scott really do affirm their gay son. So between you and me, I know them. I'm pretty sure they do that. But I think for the sake of the video, they need a sort of a first step. We need. Parents aren't going to go from here to go in one step. They need to have a landing journey.

Wendy Montgomery [00:24:01] Yeah, I think it's a journey for a lot of parents. Some parents are, you know, within 48 hours immediately loving and accepting. Some parents, it's five, 10 years or anything in between, and anything that helps them get closer to loving and accepting their child keeps that child safer and happier.

John Dehlin [00:24:16] Got it. Scott writes, in his view, the video gives false hope. Let the church post a true video of all the families who kick their kids out. I mean, Scott's not being realistic, but he's basically saying, post a realistic video, not a video of what happens once in a million times in Mormon families. What would you guys. Would you guys respond to Scott and say, scott, things aren't as dire as you say?

Daniel Parkinson [00:24:39] If it's that bad, let's put some narratives out there that are different. So other families have some other role models. Let's make them the role model. Even if they're the only family of Mormon just doing that, maybe now there'll be four families, you know, that's better than one.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Yeah, yeah. We can't let our anger or frustration get in the way of, I guess, progress, or at least we want to reinforce the right types of behavior.

Wendy Montgomery [00:25:07] Right, right.

Thomas Montgomery [00:25:09] Well, and I think that video doesn't really have anything to offer actual LGBT People who are in or out of the church. Really what it has to offer is really just targeted at the parents. And you know, it's a six minute video and it does a little disservice to the, you know, year two years that the Macintoshes took to come around to their son. You know, you're flipping through very fast history there, but it's a, it's, it's very important for the orthodox members of the church to see that, realize, oh, I can come around to my child a lot faster than it took us from previous time periods.

John Dehlin [00:26:01] Got it. Okay. I have three kind of least questions that I want to make sure we cover today. The first is what can we reasonably. What are some, let's say you had an audience with Holland and Kristofferson and you know, the friendly, affirming ones, Uchtdorf or whoever, and they said, all right, make suggestions, but make practical ones. Given that we're junior members of the quorum of the 12, given that Oakes and you know, Bednar and Nelson are kind of in charge, what are some reasonable changes the church could make to make this better? Or let's start with you, Thomas, then we'll do Daniel, then we'll do Wendy. Can you think of any reasonable changes the church could make to reduce suicides?

Calls for Change from Church Leadership

Thomas Montgomery [00:26:55] Get rid of the November policy. You snuck it into the handbook in the middle of the night. You can take it out in the middle of the night with or without an explanation. You can't go anywhere and be viewed with any credibility. Even putting out the Macintosh video or any other of these. I remember because they just did the whole revision on Mormons and gay, Mormons and gays to Mormon and gay, as if it was some big step forward. But in, in the wake of that exclusion policy, it doesn't mean a thing. It's absolutely worthless because you invite gay people back into the pews so you can excommunicate them for apostasy. It makes no sense. It gives you no room to go anywhere in the conversation. And other than Nelson, you know, voicing in a one off talk at BYU Hawaii that it was revelation. There's no reason they can't pull that out just as quick as they put it in.

John Dehlin [00:28:04] Okay, so Thomas, you're calling for a repeal, but that's hard because Nelson came later and said it was doctrine. Now, Paul, do it before he's prophet. What's that?

Thomas Montgomery [00:28:15] Do it before he's the prophet, huh?

John Dehlin [00:28:19] Yeah, that, that. You gotta admit that's tricky though, because he kind of, he kind of painted himself into a corner a little bit.

Thomas Montgomery [00:28:25] Don't you think very few people actually know that unless they're involved in LGBT stuff.

Daniel Parkinson [00:28:30] The average he's very old.

Thomas Montgomery [00:28:32] Wasn't in conference, wasn't in the ensign.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] Okay. And then if polygamy can be rolled back, if blacks can be given the priesthood, then this can be rolled back. Is that fair to say, Thomas?

Thomas Montgomery [00:28:48] Yeah, even easier than that because you don't have a hundred plus year history of first presidency affirming that blacks in the not getting the priesthood is doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:29:00] Right.

Thomas Montgomery [00:29:01] You just have a paragraph in a handbook.

John Dehlin [00:29:05] All right, Daniel, what are some realistic recommendations you could make to the brethren?

Daniel Parkinson [00:29:11] You're in trouble here because I already have a list and I'm just going to read it to you.

John Dehlin [00:29:14] All right, read it slowly.

Daniel Parkinson [00:29:17] One, promote a campaign against suicides of our young people that includes cooperation with secular mental health groups, LDS social services and others. And make full use of the family acceptance project research and brochure. That's my biggest second is really advocate for families accepting their gay and lesbian children even when they choose same sex relationships. That seems to be improved with the Macintosh video. I hope that will be a trend. Address the huge problem of homeless LDS LGBT teens. There should be a campaign against ostracizing gay family members. And there should be a responsibility on the parts of the wards for caring for our homeless teens. And we should encourage Mormon families to take in homeless teens through foster care, including LGBT teens. My third point, build a campaign against bullying and hate speech in our communities and in our congregations. The next one is nuance. The message about the sin of homosexual activity. This is a hard one, but they really need that. They can give very helpful messages to LGBT people who choose same sex relationships. For example, they could emphasize monogamy is better than promiscuity. They could emphasize that safe sex is better than unsafe sex. They could encourage young LGBT people to choose moral values even within their same sex relationships and help them avoid drug use by, you know, having a nuanced discussion saying, you know, what's really bad here and what's just simply against our church rules. So that's one stop. All excommunications and disfellowships for homosexuality make same sex relationships only a temple or priesthood worthiness issue. They don't need to excommunicate anybody. They can just make it a unless someone chooses excommunication voluntarily as a path to full fellowship or something, but not having it forced on people. Stop asking about homosexual relationships as part of the baptismal interview. And that's part of the policy now. Just basically policy, right? Limit worthiness, restrictions to temple and priesthood privileges if you have to. Have them. Stop the practice of annotating the membership records of members with the history of homosexuality. As Benji Shimmer kind of pointed out in his podcast interview with you, that's highly marginalizing that people have restricted callings that basically equate homosexuality with pedophilia and they're restricted from working with youth or children, which is ridiculous since most pedophilia is a heterosexual thing. And then my next one is help identify factors that make mixed orientation marriages succeed or fail. Use that information in helping people make good decisions when they're contemplating this course. Acknowledge the role that bisexuality might play in your capacity of succeeding in a marriage like that, the role of aversion to the opposite sex and stuff like that. Basically looking at it more realistically rather than, you know, pray the gay away or enter a mixed sex, enter a mixed orientation marriage so that your gayness will go away, which happened a lot, hopefully doesn't happen much. Now my next one is also help people who are ending mixed orientation marriages that are unsustainable to break smoothly with less damages to both spouses and their children. The bishop could recognize the couples in that predicament because they are following often bad advice by church leaders and so they shouldn't be blaming either partner. They both partners need support through the process. Neither one should be demonized or ostracized. The bishop should have a role and creating helping them create a productive relationship around parenting and resolving the divorce with as little negative as possible. And also the bishop should be sensitive to the extra pain that's gonna happen addressing the issues with extended families. And the bishop could also try to retain both partners as members of the ward or the new ward where they reside. And last of all, but this needs a lot more, this needs a lot more points is just start treating transgender people with empathy. Allow the membership in the church regardless of their operative status. Allow them to be baptized without any special permission. Stop equating them with murders by putting them in the special category that murderers are in where they have to have permission of the first presidency. Once again, limit worthiness restrictions to temple and priesthood privileges. And last of all, well, there's more. But please, please, please modify the role of BYU standards so that it is not so punitive. Remove the myth, remove the witch hunt and anonymous tips model that they use at BYU and then victimizes our LGBT students there. Never hold academic records or transcripts of students who are forced out of BYU or who leave byu. Basically make it a. Make BYU a safe place for our LGBT teens and young adults and show the rest of the church how they do it by having decent policies there which have improved, but they're still kind of on the side of terrible.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] Is this a blog post you've published already, Daniel?

Daniel Parkinson [00:34:38] Yeah, and I had one more there about fixing the Boy Scouts that they actually did. So I was able to go from 12 points to 11, but I think we might have some new ones.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] Will you post that link in our Zoom Chat and I'll share it on the.

Daniel Parkinson [00:34:54] On the feed now?

John Dehlin [00:34:56] Wendy, did Daniel leave you anything or did he cover it all?

Wendy Montgomery [00:34:59] Oh, that was such a good list. The two that I would have when he mentioned Family Acceptance Project, like Tom and I personally put that in the hands of Elder Christofferson. A lot of the people at Church Public affairs, if they use the Family Acceptance Project with the LDS Family Services Social Services when. Because one of the first things we did when our son came out is we went and saw our bishop and he referred us to LDS Family Services and gave us an evergreen pamphlet. So if we would have received the Family Acceptance Project booklet, I mean, that could be a game changer for so many. I think that's a really important point. And we have a quasi endorsement by the church of the Family Acceptance Project work. In that Deseret News article that came out the end of January 2016, talking about the suicides, they mention Caitlin's work. There's actually one article specifically for the Family Acceptance Project and then it's mentioned in a longer article. My other point would be that could be something that they could do even if the policy is still in force, like the bottom of the barrel acceptance is one of the 12 could get up and give a talk or write an article on the Ensign and say something strongly like if you kick your child out of their home, out of your home for being lgbt, you lose your temple recommend, you lose a calling. You're no longer in good standing with the church. That is not how we react to our family members. Any form of rejection, like if they were strongly worded where there was going to be some negative something that would happen, like you kick your kid out and you're rejecting, you know, give me your temple recommend that could be done even within the policy without that even being removed. I think there's a lot that they could do.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Or also if a parent just basically cuts off their gay kid and says, I'm not talking to you, you're dead to me. We know that that happens both with LGBT kids, but also just people who leave the church in general. They're just kind of shut off from that love. And why not make that a temp recommend question? If you can put child support and alimony in there, why not? Are you loving and supportive to all your kids?

Wendy Montgomery [00:37:14] Yeah. Regardless of what you. Yeah. Or if you agree with what their life looks like. You know, any of that? Yeah, I think that that should be done today.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] Yeah. Love it. Okay. This has been super helpful. I'm loving all these suggestions. Daniel, a lot of comments coming in saying they loved your list. A lot of people. Wendy, loved what you had to say. You too, Thomas. People are loving this part of our program. Let's go to the next most important question, probably the most important question we can ask. And for this one, Daniel, I'm gonna have you go first. If you are an LGBT Mormon youth who feels really down, maybe you're starting to have some suicidal ideation, what resources are available to you? And what would you, as a psychiatrist, Daniel, offer as resources to help. To help that person? Or if you know someone who is experiencing suicidal ideation, Daniel, talk to us about what resources are available and unmute yourself. I'll unmute you. Go ahead, Daniel.

Resources and Support for LGBT Youth

Daniel Parkinson [00:38:24] The very best resources for someone who's suicidal right now, who is LGBT youth is the Trevor Project. They have developed the best system of first responding. And so anyone who's outside of their league talking to someone who's suicidal, if you get them in touch with Trevor, get them engaged, get them on a phone call with Trevor, you're gonna find it to be very helpful. And I've heard this firsthand from people who've used the service, but I just know they have a level of training that's extraordinary and highly, highly rigorous for the. For their responders, and they use a lot of science behind it. And so I say that's great, the Family Acceptance Project. But if you're a youth, you know, my advice to you right now is try to connect with online communities. We have. We happen to have one that a lot of LDS kids from LDS backgrounds go, which is called for the strength of LGBT youth. And I'll try to get you a link to that, how they could access that and be part of an online community for LGBT youth from more background. But there's also other communities out there. They should keep themselves safe first. So everyone always says, come out, come out, come out, but with the caveat that you shouldn't come out. And if it's going to be unsafe for you. If you are going to get kicked out of your house, then don't come out till you're 18 and can support yourself. Or if you're going to be the end of violence, don't come out. So there's got to be caveats for the kind of popular ideas because coming out is usually the healthiest thing to do, but not always. So just assess your situation, just try to learn about it, but also assess your own safety. Find an ally. Find an ally in your family, in your community. Someone you can talk to that you can trust. That ally shouldn't be your bishop. It needs to be someone who won't feel obligated to go straight to your parents. So just try to assess who that is and find someone who you can tell what's going on. You can ask questions and hopefully get into some kind of an online group and maybe, hopefully you can become in real life part of a gay straight alliance at your school. Or if they have that kind of supports there, hopefully your school counselor is also going to be helpful. So that's my advice to gay youth. Do not consider going to BYU. There's, you know, let someone else go to BYU and change things there. But 18 to 21 is not the time to figure out. You need the freedom to move. Maybe you do want to stay in the church, that's okay. But you need the freedom to make that choice without coercion. So the way BYU is right now, just don't go there, Go somewhere else, anywhere else, even if you're going to stay active in the church. What else?

John Dehlin [00:41:30] Those are great, Daniel. Whitney, why don't you add some things and anything you can tell us about Mama Dragons as well.

Wendy Montgomery [00:41:37] Right. So everything Daniel mentioned are excellent resources. There's also an app that, that I feel like every person, every resident of Utah should have on your phone. It's called SafeUT. It's a direct link like everyone should have on their phone. Whether you are feeling suicidal yourself or you know of somebody. There's a hotline, there's a chat on there. There's places where you can put anonymous tips. Like I know of this kid in my math class in Draper High School that's having trouble and there's like 24, 7. There's counselors and people to talk to and they will put you in touch with the people that can help. It's an awesome app. There's also.

John Dehlin [00:42:19] What's the name of the app? One more time.

Wendy Montgomery [00:42:21] Safeutoo. T S A F E U T okay, so if you just put that in your app store search, it'll come up. It has like a. It's red and black and white. It has a shield.

John Dehlin [00:42:31] Got it.

Wendy Montgomery [00:42:33] Some other resources specific to Utah is Youth Futures in Ogden and Encircle in Provo. Both are amazing. They're doing excellent work. Maybe we can link websites, links to this podcast for those too.

John Dehlin [00:42:49] I'll post in circle right now. What's the other one?

Wendy Montgomery [00:42:51] Okay. Youth Futures, which used to be Ogden outreach. Now it's called Youth Futures, the Family acceptance Project. Excellent resource. Mama Dragons. Most of our Mama Dragons are in Utah, but we're kind of around the country. We even have some out of the country. But the work that we do is a lot more like behind the scenes. We have, I mean, I know Mama Dragons that have homeless kids that are sleeping on their couch. We fundraise to help pay tuition for a semester for a college kid that got cut off by his parents when he came out. We've got moms that go meet with bishops and stake presidents and try and educate them. We've got moms that testify at Capitol Hill. Nika Allgood, she's the current president of Mama Dragons. She works closely with Equality Utah, which is another excellent resource. So these are all things.

Daniel Parkinson [00:43:45] Can I also just pitch for LDS walk with you? If you're. If there's parents who might be not quite ready to do something quite as out, there's Mama Dragons. There's a group called ldswalkwithyou.org anyone who wants to join the Facebook group. There's 700 active LDS parents who are there discussing how to be and of course, the videos. So at ldswalkwithyou.org, anyone can join the Facebook group by just asking the contact form there. So that's sort of a different. As a lot of some of the same people are in mom and Dragons, but it's also some people who wouldn't be comfortable in Mama Dragons.

Wendy Montgomery [00:44:22] Right. The other thing that I'm wanting, that I kind of want to say that might be very unpopular, but I'll tell you why I think it's important is, and I'm speaking to straight people right now, not LGBT people, because I feel like the church as a whole, not always, but as a whole, is just not a safe place for them right now. But if you are a straight ally, family member, friend, please stay in church if you can, and I'm saying this with a very large caveat of if this is emotionally, spiritually, mentally damaging, don't stay. But if you feel like you can. It is so important because we've got, you know, Mormons are really good. Mormon parents are really good at making gay babies. And as long as the church is around, there's going to be gay and trans people sitting in those pews. And I guarantee you that those kids and adults that are LGBT are scanning the crowd looking for even one friendly face. They need somebody sitting there with them, especially the kids. I mean, my son knew at 13 that he was gay. And if we didn't know or he wasn't able to come out to us until 18 or 19, those are five of the most formative years a kid goes through. And he'll be sitting there week after week hearing things that feel very rejecting to him by people that he believes speak for God. So if there's anybody sitting there with them that has, that's able to bear testimony, make a comment in their class, wear a rainbow ring, a ribbon, have a bumper sticker on their car, post affirming things on their social media, any way that you can be a friend for that person. It's critical for these kids. And we've got, you know, there's. I could just tell you, so many of these kids, they just need one. They just need one sitting there with them. And a lot of times it's not their parents. Just go up and give them a hug. You don't need to out them. Or we've got four kids in my ward that have come out to me, but their parents don't even know. Three of which the parents don't even know. And it's incredibly difficult for me to go to church. I don't go very often anymore. But when I go, I make sure I just find those kids and just give them a hug. It's so important because Mormons are suspect until you've proven that you're not. And it's a shame that it's that way. And please take this, knowing that I'm not telling you to stay if it's difficult for you or hard. But those are the kids that are the most invisible. If they're not out and they're sitting there for five years hearing these messages, those are the ones I worry the most about, that they're the most vulnerable and most at risk.

Daniel Parkinson [00:47:00] And when you say Mormons are suspect, you mean Mormons. Any gay person is. Any gay youth is going to assume that all the Mormons think they're horribly devil possessed kind of thing. So that's what she means by her husband. Until you tell them, I can't yeah, you let them know somehow, and you let them know without ever talking to you. They may never come to you, but they will. The support will make a difference to them, them. The comments that you can make in church. So I 100% back that up. Try to stay if you can. If this is, if you're on the fence, let this hold you in the. Into activity for a while.

Wendy Montgomery [00:47:39] Right. And even if you're not speaking specifically to those kids, if you're in gospel doctrine, relief society, priesthood, you're in class with their parents, and if you say something loving and kind and Christ like, it doesn't even have to be specifically gay affirming, it could just be. I believe everybody has, you know, should be able to come to church and we should accept our kids no matter what. And even stuff like that can influence how those parents react when and if they come, their kids come out to them.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] Beautiful. Thomas, what would you add to your wonderful wife's comments and to Daniel's?

Thomas Montgomery [00:48:14] You know, they're the, they have all of the. They've gone over all the networks and all of the resources. I really can't add anything to it.

Closing Statements and Final Reflections

John Dehlin [00:48:25] Okay, so really quick, I want each of you to prepare kind of a closing statement on what. What are some final words you'd want to share with our audience? And Daniel, if there's anything else, or Wendy, anyone, if there's anything else you guys think we ought to cover, just to make this a little bit personal, Wendy or Daniel or Thomas, I'm wondering, without giving any details that would be considered inappropriate, can you guys talk at all about what, you know about how the rubber meets the road with this issue over the past few years? Because as I understand it, part of what Mama Dragons do is they actually show up at funerals to provide support to families who have lost a kid. So without trying to sensationalize that, can you just talk about that? Because I think that's kind of where maybe the rubber really meets the road. Would you mind sharing something about that?

Wendy Montgomery [00:49:24] Sure. Julie Packer, who is the president elect of Mama Dragons, so she'll be the president next year of Mama Dragons. She's been public about speaking about this, so I feel like I can share a little bit of her story. But she lost her son Tyson to suicide, I think maybe about two years ago now. She had, just a few months before that happened, joined Mama Dragons. And when she posted about that, there were, I want to say, six or seven Mama Dragons who she had never even met or communicated with that drove to the funeral and sat with her and she said that it was the most impactful healing thing for her to have those women with her because out of all the other people at the funeral, she knew those women understood. They knew the pain. There are other people that, you know, it's their story to share. But I've attended several funerals and viewings of gay Mormons that we've lost, some of which are very close to my family. And there's nothing like it. There's no. It's a pain I can't even describe. So I can't even imagine if it was my own child. But I watched my 17 year old son as a pallbearer carry the casket of one of his best friends and it just about undid me watching my baby carry another baby. We are losing too many of these kids and it's so unnecessary. They are so easy to love. But yeah, mom and Dragons is a group that we show up when it's hard. We also show up when it's a wedding and we rejoice with them. Some of the most beautiful experiences of my life have happened at gay weddings. There is a love and a tenderness there and a triumph because of how hard they had to fight to be together. So it's a bittersweet thing. But if we stop talking about suicide and shy away from it because it's difficult and people might be upset with you, our kids are not going to make it.

Daniel Parkinson [00:51:22] I just want to throw in there just about the funerals. I just want to add that after the Mama Dragons have been doing this for a while and sometimes some of the enthusiasm, people learned from that, how to do it in a way that was helpful. Like it's not always helpful to. It wouldn't be helpful to blast into a funeral with signs and, or overwhelmed here. No. These were, these. It was a small group of women who just made their presence known to them. Right. But they weren't high profile about it. They were just there to love. And so it's different than, you know, the idea that some people might get from that, that they are just showing up en masse to every funeral that they think might be a suicide. No, they're going as a way of being supportive but also respectful that the family is doing. So it's really, you know, a good, good hearted group of people.

Wendy Montgomery [00:52:14] The Mom Dragons, the funerals are not the place for advocacy and activism. That's just a place to grieve and mourn with the people that have lost. Loved one.

Daniel Parkinson [00:52:22] Yeah. So I just want to make that Clear. But that is a great example of where the rubber hits the road. They're just being there, and they're just jumping in with whatever resources they got and whatever abilities they got to make a difference. And it has been a really amazing movement to watch.

John Dehlin [00:52:38] I'm just wondering if you guys have heard some comments, some reactions from parents or siblings just about how real it was and maybe even how they wish they would have acted in a different way. Just. Is there anything about the starkness of the reality of that funeral, A story even, or a comment that just can help people wake up now instead of waiting till one of their loved ones ends up at a funeral as well? Does that make sense?

Wendy Montgomery [00:53:14] Do you guys have anything to share about that?

Daniel Parkinson [00:53:16] I mean, the funeral I went to happened to be some parents who were extremely supportive. So it wasn't the best example of saying, well, if they had done something different, they could have saved their son. It was hard for me to see what they could have done differently. But what could have been different for this particular kid was if he had more community support. If three years earlier, you know, he wasn't ostracized by the kids in his ward, you know, if he would have had sort of resources. These parents were just going all over the Wasatch front trying to find some supportive activities for this kid.

Thomas Montgomery [00:53:57] And.

Daniel Parkinson [00:53:57] But there just wasn't enough to keep him out of the trouble he was seeking. And so it was. It was just. They needed more than we need the parents to come on board. We need them to do what those parents did, but we also need more. We need a community that's going to help the parents who are struggling for support. And this was a great example of where they were being failed. These parents and this kid were failed by the surrounding community because there just wasn't. The rejection was something that couldn't be overcome. There just wasn't enough to give him to overcome the special struggles that he had on top of being gay. And whereas another kid might have, you know, we could have seen them to adulthood, and then everything would have been fine, you know? Yeah, maybe.

John Dehlin [00:54:46] As each of you are giving your closing statement, we'll have Thomas, then Daniel, then Wendy, maybe close. If you could add to your closing statement what our listeners can do to be a part of the solution, please feel free to add that. So, Thomas, what would you like to sort of say as your concluding statement?

Thomas Montgomery [00:55:10] Well, I wanted to kind of confirm what was said earlier, you know, as the church is constituted today. You know, despite talks by Holland or Uchtdorf that we want to welcome you. It's not a safe environment. And I think in my personal interactions last year, you know, we had a friend, young trans boy, who was going to see his bishop. His bishop had just called him and said, hey, I got some clarification on you're attending the ward. I was informed because I knew that there'd been an area regional priesthood leadership meeting, and I knew in that meeting that a question had been asked that what to do with trans people coming to church. You know, should we welcome them? Should we not welcome them? How? And basically the instruction from Elder Anderson and Elder Clayton was, we can't allow LGBT people to be distractions in our wards. So being informed by that and hearing he was going to see his bishop, I just had an inspiration right in the moment. You know, I would call it the Spirit. Said, I need to get my car right now and go to that bishop's house. And I got there after he'd already gone in. It was like 10 o' clock at night when he came out. And, you know, I jumped out of my car because I saw him just collapse in the gutter in front of the bishop's house. Because he had been told, you're not welcome here unless you present as a girl. And which he was just repeating exactly what he'd been instructed from an apostle in the 70 a couple days before. And you can say all the nice things you want in conference, in the bottom line and in your training and in how you're instructing bishops and stake presidents and in the handbook is they either conform or they're not welcome, and we're just going to excommunicate them. And that is the essence of the bottom line right now. And I think what I want to share is my closing messages. We think we have this hard, final doctrine that can never be changed. I think I saw people saying that at least half dozen speakers over conference weekend or Doctrine never changes. Doctrine changes all the time. It's just they never admit it when it does. And they obfuscate the history so that you don't know that it changed. Bryce Cook wrote an amazing article that just came out in the last month. It's MormonLGBTQQueQuestions.com It's a 60 page dissertation on the theology of the church and how it's founded on LGBT issues, but also how it's changed just in the last 10 years. You go from the doctrine of Kimball and McConkey and Packard where it was hardline, LGBT is evil, being gay is wrong, it is an abomination to, you know, around 10 years ago, the doctrine started changing where, oh, it's okay to be gay. You just can't act gay. Well, that's completely different than 30, 40 years earlier. But there's no announcement that, hey, doctrine just changed. See, you know, see paragraph 5 for the changes to the doctrine. They just came out with something totally new, as if that's the way it's always been and that never been that way before. So it's significant to understand the doctrine and how it's being interpreted and taught in the church has changed dramatically over 50 years. Its foundations change. It's really not scriptural, and it's largely founded on the proclamation on the family, which largely has no scriptural basis either. It's pretty much just this is what the apostles say today. And so. But his dissertation goes through all of it. He's an active Mormon who wrote it. In my mind, it's very much a Lester Bush type of article. Pre Blacks in the priesthood changing. He wrote his article through three, five years before the revelation on blacks in the priesthood came. And it exposed all of the doctrines that were supposedly behind blacks in the priesthood, whether it was descendants of Cain or less valiant in the pre existence. We had a whole doctrine built up around blacks in the priesthood that we disavow today, even though doctrine never changes and yet there's a pretty clear history of doctrine changing. There's already a history of doctrine changing towards lgbt. And what it comes down to is no one feels the spirit, no one feels uplifted and motivated by calling these beautiful kids apostates and kicking them out of the church. And I think there is theological hope that this won't stand long because it has really weak legs.

John Dehlin [01:01:24] Right. Thank you, Thomas. I love it. Before Daniel, we go to you, I just want to note, Kevin Kloosterman mentioned that the the Mormon Mental Health association just released today a statement concerning transgender Mormons and the church's involvement in transgender issues and some of the larger stuff going on across the United States. I want to let listeners know we're going to be doing an entire series on Mormon stories in the next little bit about transgender Mormons. But also I just want to make a shout out to all the mental health professionals out there. If you go to the Mormon Mental Health association website, which Kevin linked to, you can find Mormon expertise around LGBT issues that can be really helpful. And there's also within Utah, the Utah LGBTQ Therapist Guild. I'll put a link to it as well. But that's a Great resource to find a resource for an LGBT Mormon loved one or a family member, an ally, just so that you can. Just so that you can get professional support. Because there are trained mental health professionals out there who can really be useful both to a Mormon kid who's struggling or, you know, with the difficulties and complexities of this issue or with family members. So just a quick shout out to mental health professionals that can be an important part of this puzzle. And that's a great segue to our resident psychiatrist, Daniel Parkinson. Daniel, what closing statements do you have?

Daniel Parkinson [01:03:05] I guess I don't have a lot more to say other than to just support what Wendy said. If you can stay, stay longer, if you can. You know, if we want to convince people, I want to win this battle. We're fighting against suicide. And what it's going to take is convincing more people. And the way to convince people is not to be where I'm at because I'm an outsider, is to be inside. And there's going to be a lot. If enough of you can stay there and can influence the ward around you, a you're going to save the lives of the youth in that ward. They might find their way out later. And as Winnie said, that's probably the best thing for them right now. But meanwhile they don't have that option and we just got to keep them alive and that you can make a difference in their lives. But also you can change the climate in your ward, you can change the climate in the church in general. And those are all really worthy things. And so I'd encourage people to stay if it's not too otherwise difficult for them, if they're on the fence, that is. If for some weird reason a super orthodox Mormon is listening to this, I just ask you to please open your mind about what might be feel like rejection from the perspective of a child or any family member who isn't orthodox Mormon, not just lgbt, but anything. Unfortunately, Mormonism creates a mindset that isn't always helpful at talking to people that aren't Mormons. And if you really want to be good missionaries, you gotta get a little bit better empathy and understand how they feel about their interactions with Mormons and how they're feeling judged by you and how that's sort of something that if you're a normal Mormon, you're not really getting, you're not aware of it. So I just really want orthodox Mormons to kind of reflect. And I'm not saying what you believe is wrong. I'm not saying what you believe that you should change your beliefs. What I'm saying is you can change how you're interacting with others so that the people in your family aren't feeling judged by you. And that's gonna do a world of good for. Especially for your children. Your vulnerable children who are LGBT or for some other reason aren't fitting the mold of the Mormon life that you're hoping for them, but you still want them to be helpful. And so those are my two bits.

John Dehlin [01:05:47] Love it. Daniel, thank you so much for all of your expertise today. It's been great to have you. You too, Thomas and Wendy. Why don't we allow you to kind of give the final word?

Wendy Montgomery [01:05:59] Okay. I can think of a lot of things that people can do to help these kids. Some of the Mama Dragons host weekly dinners, like Sunday dinners at their home, and they invite any LGBT people that want to come. And those numbers grow and grow almost every week. And sometimes they'll have 20 people there. That's an easy thing to do to help LGBT people find others in their community to be friends with, to be in an affirming environment. Some of them go, you know, live in a home that's not affirming at all. So if they have some safe place, it's so important. You can volunteer at Encircle, volunteer at Youth Futures Equality Utah. I know you can donate money to any of them if that's something that you're able to do. Social media posts help. Sometimes I feel like all of my conservative, orthodox Mormon friends have unfriended me on Facebook. So it's kind of an echo chamber when I post things. So if you know that you have more conservative, traditional thinking members that follow you on Facebook or Instagram, Twitter, post something. I mean, there's a wealth of things. It doesn't have to be inflammatory against the church. It can just be loving towards LGBT people. Please stop saying, love the sinner, hate the sin. That is not inclusive. That is not helpful. That doesn't keep your testimony intact. Just say, I love you, period, Full stop. End of sentence. No, I love you. But I think it's a good idea for everyone to have either the Trevor project or the Utah has its own suicide hotline, phone numbers programmed in your cell phone so it's ready. You don't have to search for it. If you're ever in a situation where you're with people who could be struggling, there's so much that can be done. And just as a personal note, mom and Dragons are working day and night 247 with these kids. We would Love, love to be out of a job. Please love your kids so that we don't have to. I'll just end with that.

John Dehlin [01:08:03] Beautiful. I will add one final comment that one of our listeners made as we also are thanking our listeners. Somebody made a shout out to pflag. That was Randy. Randy says, don't forget pflag. Parents and family members of lesbian and gay teens. I think I struggling with the PFLAG acronym, but basically. It's a great point. What's that?

Daniel Parkinson [01:08:29] That's a great point. They have a great group, both in Salt Lake. I think there's a separate group in Ogden, and there's a newer group in Utah Valley, and they are amazing groups. And the Mormon parents who go there rave about it. They find their home there with those parents. So, yeah, that's another great, great organization.

John Dehlin [01:08:45] So that's Provo. Provo, Utah County. Also Cache Valley has one as well. Go ahead, Wendy.

Wendy Montgomery [01:08:50] I was just gonna say the acronym is Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, but it also includes bisexual, transgender. Randy Glasscock runs the Utah county one. And the work he's doing down there is. I mean, he is really on the front lines helping with suicide awareness. He's incredible. Go visit him. Go, you know, help him out over there.

John Dehlin [01:09:13] Shout out to Randy.

Daniel Parkinson [01:09:15] Yeah, but also the solid chapter we have, the Smithsons, we have, you know, in all these chapters, we just have some amazing parents. Everyone I've met at any of them has just been the king of the crop.

John Dehlin [01:09:24] And if you live in. Oh, isn't there a really good support group in Arizona for LGBT people? Can you talk about that really quick?

Wendy Montgomery [01:09:31] Sure. It's called All Arizona. It was started by Bryson Sarah Cook. He's the man that Tom mentioned that wrote that paper. They have two gay sons and started about five years ago. We have monthly get togethers. We have a yearly conference. Last year, Steve Young and his wife Barb were our keynote speakers. This year, Richard and Claudia Bushman are our Keynote speakers. It's April 22nd. For anyone that's in Arizona, it's in Mesa. We have a Mama Dragons of Arizona. There are several groups here in Arizona because we have so many members of the church, so. But that All Arizona group is phenomenal.

John Dehlin [01:10:05] Is there a website or a Facebook group about that?

Wendy Montgomery [01:10:08] Yeah, I think there's a website, all arizona.org the Facebook group has more action and stuff happening than the website, though.

John Dehlin [01:10:19] Okay, so check out just Google All Arizona or Facebook, search All Arizona, and you can find that there. Yeah, and I'll post A link to it here. Oh, so many links. Okay, well, I just want to end by thanking our wonderful panel. I think we were. I feel like we were constructive. We tried to be compliant with the guidelines. I don't feel like it got nasty or negative. I feel like we tried to have a good spirit about this conversation. So, Thomas, Daniel, Wendy, sincere thanks to you for coming on the podcast, but also for your wonderful advocacy work throughout Mormonism. Bless you guys. Love you. Thank you. I want to thank all our listeners who tuned in. We steadily had over 100 people contiguously checking out this episode. A lot of good comments and questions came. So check out the live stream. Want to encourage people to continue joining us live because it makes just for a more interesting discussion. But we're grateful for everyone who participated. I want to just quickly give a shout out to Amy Grubbs and Cody Layton. They work with me at the Open Stories Foundation. They always work behind the scenes along with the OSF board of directors to make what we do at the Open Stories foundation possible. Natasha Alfer Parker does a great job with Mormon Mental Health podcast. If you want to check out. She also did an episode on this. Please support Natasha always. Gina Colvin and Dan Witherspoon do a great job with the thoughtful Faith and Mormon Matters podcast. And then, most importantly, I want to thank listeners and viewers for donating to the osf. Your donations make all this possible. And if anyone has enjoyed these programs, these shows, these podcasts, a donation of 10 or $20 a month, a recurring donation, can literally keep us alive. So please, please, if you value what we do, just know that we're transparent in our finances. Nobody's getting rich. We're all just trying to constructively help Mormon culture, Mormonism. So please help out and support if you can. So with that, Wendy, Daniel and Thomas, love you guys. Thanks again.

Sign-Off and Farewell

Thomas Montgomery [01:12:33] Thanks. Talk to you later.

John Dehlin [01:12:35] Proud of you guys. Take care.

Wendy Montgomery [01:12:36] Bye.

John Dehlin [01:12:38] And again, thanks to all our listeners. You guys check back soon for more on Mormon Stories podcast and join us@mormonstories.org if you have any more comments or questions. Take care, everybody. Talk soon. 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 by the Lower Lights.

Wendy Montgomery [01:13:20] Wounded Heart Anger or Mouth I draw myself apart Searching my soul.

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