Welcome and Guest Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is September 24, 2021, and as always, I am so super excited for today's episode. Today we have prepared for you a special presentation called the Gay Mormon Reformation.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] I think if I had thought about this beforehand, I might have Reformation in quotes, because I think I would call this the recycled Gay Mormon Reformation. But not to poison the well too much. Today we are super excited to have two guests with us who are here to talk about from sort of the gay Mormon perspective, what they've experienced in terms of understanding the history of the Mormon Church and what they're seeing now in the church, particularly with the most recent public spokespeople that seem to be publicly advocating or apologizing for the church around LGBTQ issues.

John Dehlin [00:01:18] And so there's so much to talk about today. But to go ahead and begin, I want to introduce our two guests. And the first guest is returning to Mormon Stories Podcast. He's sort of acting as co host for today. He's also got his own Mormon Stories podcast episode and he is the genius behind the up leveling of cinematography for Mormon Stories podcast and our YouTube channel over the past couple years. The one, the only, Gerardo Sumano. Hey, Gerardo. Welcome back. Mormon Stories.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:56] Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:01:58] Hey, do you want to just introduce yourself a little bit to everybody?

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:02] Yeah. So I. Oh my gosh, where to start? I think you have to go watch my seven hour episode with.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:11] With John.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:13] Well, but I was raised in Mexico in the church, very orthodox Mormon. I knew I was gay from a very young age, went on a mission. But before a mission I actually went through Evergreen and the conversion therapy of Evergreen. David Mason, a very high profile ex conversion therapist.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:37] And I say X because he ever like in 2019, he came out as gay and divorced his wife and stopped doing conversion therapy. But I went, he was my conversion therapist for about a year before going on my mission.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:56] On my mission I got super. I was super orthodox. I, I became very, very orthodox and believing. And right after that I went to BYU Idaho and it was around that time when I realized that the gay thing hadn't gone away and it was not gonna go away.

Gerardo Sumano [00:03:14] And anyway, so I ended up meeting my husband and getting married. And I, while at BYU Idaho, I found, well, it's kind of complicated. But my relationship with the church started changing and started reading about the history of the church, especially regarding gay issues and how the church had changed its stances and what it taught compared to, like, what they have been teaching in the 70s. And see, and I. And even at BYU Idaho, I was realizing that the church was completely in a different spot regarding gay issues and their stance on conversion therapy and their stance on the fact that maybe people could change.

Gerardo Sumano [00:04:07] Like, I saw the church getting away from those ideas, and I was just pretty surprised in some ways, happy. But anyway, all that took me to find out more about church history and I lost my faith. And ever since, I been pretty involved with Mormon stories and helping John with the podcast.

Gerardo Sumano [00:04:33] I'm really passionate about this topic, really passionate about LGBTQ issues and how the church handles homosexuality and, and, and, and the ever evolving ways that. That the church rhetoric or like. Yeah, the evolving church rhetoric regarding the issue.

John Dehlin [00:04:59] Yeah. Well, I have huge respect for you, Gerardo, for your intelligence, for your intellect, for your commitment, for your passion. And I'm really grateful that you worked with Tyler to help organize today's episode. So thank you.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] And Tyler Perry, I think this is your first time on Mormon Stories podcast, is that right?

Tyler Perry [00:05:21] This is my first time here, and

John Dehlin [00:05:24] I think you're joining us from across the pond. Is that right?

Tyler Perry [00:05:27] Yeah, from northern Japan. It's almost midnight here.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] Well, tell us a little bit about yourself and why you really wanted to be a part of today's presentation and why you helped create it.

Tyler Perry [00:05:41] Of course. So I am a pioneer stock Mormon, I think, seventh generation or so from the handcart pioneers. I can trace my lineage up to Cache Valley, but I was raised in California, so I have more of an association with the California Mormon side of things.

Tyler Perry [00:06:04] Mormonism largely worked for me and for my family growing up, for the most part, with the caveat of I was really bad at being straight. And as I came to terms with that and actually accepted my sexuality, I started to realize how incompatible my needs were as a human being with the teachings of the church.

Tyler Perry [00:06:30] And I eventually wound up here in Japan, where I met my wonderful fiance. And after coming out, I got involved with doing a bit of blogging. I wrote a review on a book by Charlie Bird that he released last year.

Tyler Perry [00:06:53] I'm a little bit embarrassed, actually, about that blog at this point in time. It's a bit embarrassing. But Gerardo read it, apparently liked it, decided to reach out to me and ask me to participate in this. I think this is a really important topic. I think that the.

Tyler Perry [00:07:09] The impact that apologists have on the LGBT community is, despite the best of their intentions, it winds up being rather harmful and overall detrimental to the movement and our efforts to try to make Mormonism a better place.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] I love it. Gerardo, maybe you can search for that article and we can post it because we'll put it in the show notes. But also, I think it's important, you know, there's this idea that I learned from Maya Angelou, which is when you know better, you do better. And we all are, are all a product of our conditioning and our upbringing and, and we don't need to be ashamed of anything. We just learn and grow and progress. So, Tyler, I think that that blog may really serve as a, as an important example of how we can feel passionately one day. And then when we have some life experience and learn a few things, our perspectives can change.

Tyler Perry [00:08:07] Well, the, the reason why I feel a little bit embarrassed about that is because it's kind of. It's kind of thirsty a little bit. I was between. Between relationships at the time and I was a parent and it was in the middle of the pandemic, so it has a certain mood to it.

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:22] And yeah, so he was not. Because as I understand that the, the blog was not pro, like to like super pro church. But I mean, the article that I read.

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:37] What.

Gerardo Sumano [00:08:38] Because here's the thing, John. I really feel like allies in the, in the ex Mormon community or people that want to be allies in the progressive Mormon community as well. Are they. They're really struggling to understand what is going on in the church regarding LGBT issues as this new crop of public figures has come out in a very more nuanced way, seeing things like the same thing that we've seen in apologetics, like people like Patrick Mason, Terrell Givens and Fiona Givens, like the same thing kind of is happening parallel in the, in this space of public figures and, and gay issues. So I hadn't found anyone that had engaged in, in just like a critical view of, for example, what some of these new books that are industrial books.

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:38] So finding Tyler's blog really caught my attention where he went through a pretty. I think it was a really good review of Charlie Bird. He highlighted the good parts, but he was also highlighting why some of the things that Charlie wrote in the book or are in the book might be a little problematic.

John Dehlin [00:10:02] So, yeah, I know we're going to be talking about Charlie and Ben. It's Ben Schlapp. How do you pronounce his last name? Shloudy Ben Shalatti. But I think a lot of our listeners have no idea who you're talking about. And so it's going to feel like inside baseball that we're talking about Charlie and Ben. Yeah, I know. We're going to talk about them later. Do you want to start with setting up the way the church is handling things now, or do we want to build that through the. The slide deck in the presentation?

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:32] I think we can build it through the slide.

Tyler Perry [00:10:34] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:34] Okay.

Tyler Perry [00:10:35] Okay. I do think it builds well.

Overview of the Gay Mormon Reformation

John Dehlin [00:10:37] So, all right, so we've got this presentation called the Gay Mormon Reformation, and maybe Tyler will have you lead us through this slide presentation, and then Gerardo and I will jump in at various parts that make sense. How does that sound?

Tyler Perry [00:10:55] Sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:10:56] Okay.

Tyler Perry [00:10:56] Okay. All right, so let's go ahead. So this was titled the Gay Mormon Reformation. In that spirit, we want to address our theses, and so we'll just. This will outline what our agenda is going to be for our discussion, kind of going over the main points that we're going to discuss. The first thing we will establish. I'll read the slide for the benefit of our listening audience, is that Mormon teachings are substantially and measurably harmful to the LGBTQ community. And that's independent of orthodoxy or orthopraxy. And just to define orthopraxy, it's kind of an unusual term. It's the actual practice of. Associated with orthodox belief. So it's the things you're expected to do by the things that you're expected to believe.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] Okay.

Tyler Perry [00:11:46] And then the next point is that apologists, especially those who identify as lgbtq, enable the perpetuation of harmful teachings and traditions. So because of the existence of LGBTQ apologists, the church essentially has top cover that allows them to do and teach harmful things. And this has been discussed on Mormon stories many, many times. We're kind of treading old ground when we mentioned that, but I think it is important in the overall scheme of this presentation to really identify some specific instances and how the Church has done that. So we'll get into that as we move through.

Tyler Perry [00:12:25] The third point is that there are significant, seemingly insurmountable barriers to affirming LGBTQ members, but these are purely cultural and traditional issues. They're not theological or doctrinal in nature. That's a pretty bold claim, but I think we're going to be able to give some credence to that and really demonstrate that these are just the wicked traditions of our fathers, not actually theologically founded. And then the final point that we're going to discuss is really how apologists can address this, how they can address this barrier to affirming LGBTQ members by actually presenting theologically sound solutions to the problem that the church decides to keep creating for itself.

John Dehlin [00:13:12] Okay, so if I had to summarize what I just heard, it's that the Mormon Church has a long, long history of harming LGBTQ people. Those who stand up as public spokespeople for the church on LGBTQ issues are perpetuating the harm that a lot of the barriers to making things better are cultural and, and less theological or doctrinal, mostly because the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants are completely silent and Joseph Smith are all like 1000% silent on LGBTQ issues. But that's my own observation. And then the final thing is we explore. We're going to. We're going to try and be constructive and explore solutions. Is that right?

Tyler Perry [00:13:58] That. That's correct.

Gerardo Sumano [00:13:59] We'll.

Tyler Perry [00:13:59] We'll also talk a little bit about what the Bible actually says about this issue and the silence that speaks volumes from the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of. Great price on the subject.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] I love it. Okay, let's. Let's keep going. This is good.

Tyler Perry [00:14:16] Yeah.

Spiritual Trauma and PTSD Among LGBT Mormons

Gerardo Sumano [00:14:16] So I thought we could start, John, by talking, if you want to bring the slide up. Okay, fine. So I found this. I. I found out about this study a fee along just, I don't know, like a couple years ago.

Gerardo Sumano [00:14:33] It's this study done, like this guy called. I can't remember his last name. He was. He did his bachelor's at BYU and. And then went and did his doctorate at the University of Georgia. And for. As his doctorate.

Gerardo Sumano [00:14:55] What do you call it? Like, his doctorate study or dissertation? He conducted this study among LGBT members, members of the church. And he wanted to find out about how. How the teachings of the church help or harm LGBT people.

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:19] So he started this, his dissertation, by just talking about how researchers have found that not just in Mormonism, but in many organized religion, this. The teachings from organized religions have been found to be harmful towards the LGBTQ community, causing some, like, things like shame, anxiety, depression, suic. Suicidal ideation, and substance abuse. So this is. So he just starts talking about that. And then if you want to go to the next slide, something that is pretty interesting that he. That he pointed out in his dissertation is that spiritual trauma and spiritual abuse compared to like, it's. It's different than like, other types of abuse, like, like emotional or even physical abuse, because in those types of abuse, people.

Gerardo Sumano [00:16:25] People that are experiencing the abuse may have, or feel like, have, like they have an escape. They can even leave the person that is abusing them or, or just. Just Find ways to work, work that out, you know, find help. But in the case of spiritual abuse or spiritual trauma, the, the person, or let's say like the LGBTQ person who has been indoctrinated into believing the teachings from certain religion, in this case, Mormonism may really believe in God and may really believe the teachings of the church. And, and this takes the person to not be able to find an escape because the church teaches that God is everywhere and God can see everything we do.

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:18] So in some, in some kind of like, weird way, spiritual abuse may be. Sometimes be worst or just, I don't know, just different than, than other kinds of abuse, if that makes sense. So what he says is like, yeah, the, the, the, the spiritually abused may feel like they have no escape because God has all knowledge and it's present everywhere.

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:47] And then lastly, he, if you want to go to the next slide, he identifies six, six different causes of spiritual trauma, and he bases this information in other researchers. He talks about how spiritual trauma has not really been explored in the mental health realm as much as other kind of trauma as other kind of trauma. He says that most of the studies that have been conducted or the, or, or the mental health professionals that have studied this subject have studied it in regards to unhealthy organizations and cults, but not as much as religious organizations. But he was able to identify six causes from, from different researchers that may apply to, or I would say really apply to Mormonism.

Gerardo Sumano [00:18:43] One of the, the first one is the legalism, legalism of Mormonism, which is like, which is. Can be explained as how Mormonism has this teaching of you have to do A, B, C and D in order to get to heaven.

Gerardo Sumano [00:19:02] So having this rigorous kind of like steps and things that you have to follow may be a cause of spiritual trauma because if you fail to do one, then there's like this idea of sad heaven or you won't be able to make it with your family. And I don't know if you have any comments till this point, but feel free to just step in if you want.

Gerardo Sumano [00:19:27] The second one is literalism. So seeing scriptures as literal as like God is speaking through the scriptures or God is speaking through the prophets, literally, that. That could also be a cause for spiritual trauma. And this idea of mixed messaging, so saying God loves you. But if like, just like this idea of conditional love might be a way of mixed messaging, and we know that the church still, till today has this really awful way of giving mixed messages regarding the LGBTQ community.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:10] Just saying some, like, for example, saying like oh, celibacy. So, like, you identifying. Saying on their website, identifying as LGBT is great, but then Elder Holland comes to BYU and talks about how labels are divisive. So just this mixed messaging, you know,

John Dehlin [00:20:31] and also, also things like Bednar saying the church needs no defense.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:39] Right.

John Dehlin [00:20:39] And then Elder Holland saying, pick up your muskets.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:43] Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then this, like, the leadership representing God is another cause of spiritual trauma. The fact that someone can. Can say, like, God talked to me and told me you have to do this is. Is another way.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:03] And then the. The expanding external internal tension. Like, and that means how that could be explained as, like, how LGBT people are expected to not show that they're actually like, that they're gay too much, that they should present themselves as straight or just not talk too much about the subject. Like, and I thought it was super interesting when the church came up with their new handbook a couple years ago and they added the club clause that in church meetings, people are not supposed to disclose their sexual orientation. So, so just this idea of trying to like, well, you should hide who you are kind of thing.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:44] And then, of course, the spiritual bullying that, I mean, if anyone goes. And I mean, I don't know who wouldn't know about Elder Holland's. I think Elder Holland's talk at BYU may be seen as a way of spiritual bullying. So all these are happening in Mormonism.

Tyler Perry [00:22:02] Gerardo, I just want to touch on that point you made about external internal tension there. So if you're not supposed to disclose your sexual orientation, does that mean that straight men need to stop talking about their wives in elders quorum?

Gerardo Sumano [00:22:15] Right.

Tyler Perry [00:22:16] It's a double standard, and we're going to see that throughout. That part of this is that there's a. The terminology is used specifically to exclude. It's never to include.

Gerardo Sumano [00:22:26] Right, right. And just like to finish this. So if you go to the next slide, John, slide number six. Yeah. So what he found on his study, probably one of the biggest things he was able to. To find in his. In this study, like, he surveyed around 300 LGBT Mormons. I think 50% of them were still active in some way in the church. He found that among these people, they have 10 times greater prevalence of PTSD than the general US population. That's super significant. If you go to the next slide, 73% of respondents would have likely met the criteria for PTSD. And PTSD is post traumatic.

John Dehlin [00:23:25] Remind me, Post traumatic stress stress disorder.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:28] So 73% of respondents would have likely met criteria for PTSD diagnosis related to their religious experience. So on this study, he, he was asking about certain LDS teachings and how damaging or how helpful those teachings were to them. And, and that's how he was able to come up with these numbers. Just to compare. I think he, he says that this number is pretty significant because by Comparison, in the US population, the average is 7 to 8% among adults generally have met. Met the criteria for PTSD. But among LGBTQ Mormons, 73% of them.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:24:14] And, and then pro. And then something was really shocking to me that he found, if you go to the next slide, was that this he, the study participants who only associated culturally or socially with the church are just as likely to suffer as much trauma and PTSD symptoms as those considered more faithful. So he found that doesn't, it doesn't matter how orthodox or how much do you believe in the church, just by associating with the church culture, culturally or socially, you are just as likely to, to experience this post traumatic stress disorder condition.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Wow, that's intense.

Gerardo Sumano [00:24:58] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:24:59] And then I'm going to hand it over to you for the next slide, John, because you're the expert on, on the, and on that.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] Yeah. So some of you may know that I, for my dissertation, for my PhD, I studied the LGBTQ Mormon experience. And along with Dr. Bill Bradshaw of BYU, biology professor, former stake presidency member, former mission president, and my professor at Utah State University, Renee Gallagher, we studied over 1612 LGBTQ Mormons and surveyed them. It's not just the largest study of LGBTQ Mormons to date, it's the largest study, I think, that's known, of its kind regarding LGBTQ religious people.

John Dehlin [00:25:50] So. And one we published, we published probably 12 journal articles from the findings. The study has been super well received. And today we're going to just be covering three of the journal articles that were published that kind of made up my dissertation.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] This first study is from the journal Identity, and the article is called Navigating Sexual and Religious Identity Conflict A Mormon Perspective. And what we decided to do was to divide our sample into four basically four quadrants. LGBTQ Mormons who rejected their LGBTQ identity. In other words, these are gay or lesbian or bisexual Mormons that identify as straight or as same sex attracted, but they, but they reject ever identifying as gay or lesbian or bisexual. Then we, we created a second category of people who were compartmentalized where they basically lived.

John Dehlin [00:26:57] They lived a religious identity in public and then in private were living a separate life that wasn't really congruous with their religious identities. And the way they presented publicly to orthodox believing Mormons. So we called that the compartmentalized group. The third was those who reject their religious identity altogether, which is to just leave the church and join some other LGBTQ affirming church or stop, you know, engaging with religion altogether. And then the fourth was just really small group of LGBTQ Mormons that were able to be active in the church and fully out and fully living whatever life they, they want to live. And we called those the integrated group.

John Dehlin [00:27:49] So there were four groups at the time we did the study. About half of the LGBTQ Mormons that we surveyed fell into this camp of, of just leaving the church fully and rejecting the, the Mormon or religious identity.

John Dehlin [00:28:07] 37% lived in the compartmentalized space. 6%, you know, of the respondents were trying to live that same sex attracted, I'm not gay, I'm not lesbian life as a Mormon. And 4%, very small percentage, were able to kind of do the integrated thing. And long story short, we found that by far the least healthy of the four quadrants were those who rejected their LGBTQ identity. The ones who identified as same sex attracted. It's basically the Charlie Birds. It's basically the Ben Schlatterly. I am never going to remember this guy's name.

Tyler Perry [00:28:51] Ben Shalatti.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] Shalati. You're, you're, you're.

Gerardo Sumano [00:28:55] Yeah, sorry, I actually, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say they reject their LGBT identity. Well, I mean, what do you mean reject? Does that mean like they still celibate or they, they're pretty open about being gay and they say, I think they

Tyler Perry [00:29:09] fall into the comp category. Honestly, if I had to categorize too, I think they compartmentalize.

John Dehlin [00:29:17] Yeah. And we have to be this, we have to be really careful because identity, one of the sacred rules of identity is that people get to self identify and we have to be careful not to identify anyone. So. Well, you're right on calling me on that. And one of the, one of the interesting things about this study is it was conducted while the church was still sending really awful, mixed, you know, awful messages to LGBTQ Mormons. Things like, it's a sin to be gay, it's a sin to even experience same sex attraction.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] And you know, they were encouraging celibacy and, and mixed orientation marriages, and they were encouraging conversion therapy, and they were basically denying any biological sort of genesis to same sex sexuality. And, and, and they were opposed to anyone self identifying as gay or lesbian or bisexual. So partly because of this study and studies like this, and because of activists and podcasts and all of the people that have sort of, you know, the HBO documentary Believer, you know, all the lawsuits against Evergreen and the church and other religious, you know, Exodus International and Jonah and all the lawsuits against religions for the conversion therapy stuff, the church has been forced to change its rhetoric.

John Dehlin [00:30:42] And so the church is kind of moving the goalposts a little bit. But the point here is that I would say, you know, my guess is that Ben and Charlie would fit somewhere between the first two categories because while now they are allowed to identify as gay, because now the church is, is no longer punishing people for self identifying as gay, they're still.

John Dehlin [00:31:16] They're still not allowed, at least technically, to, to, you know, have full, loving, intimate relationships with gay people so that they, they would be. They would be at, at, at worst, still fitting in the category of rejecting their identity. If they are, in fact living fully celibate lives, if they are, in fact having romantic relationships on the side, then Tyler, as, as you, as you speculated, Charlie, Charlie and Ben would be compartmentalized because they would be living that double life. And I don't want to speculate as to what they're doing later. We're going to be talking about the fact that many of these role models that the church puts forward have, in fact, in the past lived double lives.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] So that's a little bit problematic. But to not get too sidetracked, what we do know for sure is that the two least healthy choices by far, in terms of self esteem, depression, identity distress, confusion, and internalized homophobia and overall quality of life, the two worst things you could do are what Ben and Charlie are modeling and recommending, which is to suppress your full LGBTQ identity, either partially or fully, and or to live a double life. That is hypocritical and false. And so wherever Ben and Charlie really are, they're in the least healthy of all places. According to our research, the healthiest place by far is either to reject your religious identity fully or to be fully integrated, which isn't to live a double life, but instead is to have a partner, date, be sexually active, be fully romantically active, and to have, we'll show later, loving, committed relationships.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] And so this again helps illustrate the point that the compartmentalized and the rejecters of their LGBTQ identity have by far the lowest quality of life, and those who are able to reject their religious identity or be integrated have the highest. And again, this is from.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] This is from the Journal Identity. There is one more article that we'll talk about in this section, which is from the Journal of gay and lesbian mental health. It's called the Psychosocial Correlates of Religious Approaches to Same Sex Attraction. And what we were able to show is some really stark and kind of mind blowing data.

John Dehlin [00:34:14] Those that were active in the church but were LGBTQ identifying, at least privately, had quality of life ratings lower than people who have a debilitating chronic illness called lupus. So if you are active in the church, inactive, but somehow still, you know, identifying as a Mormon in some way, or even if you were disfellowshipped, but still clinging onto the church with your fingernails, you had a lower quality of life than those who identify as having a debilitating chronic illness. Those who had quality of life ratings higher than those who have lupus were those who either had resigned from the church or were excommunicated from the church.

John Dehlin [00:35:01] And, you know, that was a really mind blowing finding that being excommunicated was the ideal scenario for an LGBTQ Mormon. Until I realized that what that does is it cuts off your associations with the church, such that you're forced to go build a healthy, happy life outside of your religious tradition. And that fits very well, Gerardo, with the findings that you showed earlier. And then finally, this is just really important because when we talk about Ben and Ben and Charlie and others, what they're modeling, in effect, you know, the church tried to promote conversion therapy. That's, that's a nightmare. It leads to suicidality, suicidal ideation and, or death so often, but, but so many people reported harm and mixed orientation marriages are a disaster most of the time because they're like twice as likely to end in divorce.

John Dehlin [00:36:06] And the quality of life ratings both for the same sex attracted partner and the straight spouse, they're both awful because who wants to be married to someone who's not attracted to you? Who wants to be in a loveless, basically an intimacy less marriage, at least in terms of sexual intimacy.

John Dehlin [00:36:23] What we found though, is that the absolute worst decision that an LGBTQ Mormon could make, and this is hard for someone who is raised with a lot of sexual shame and a lot of taboo around sexuality, the absolute worst decision that you could make is celibacy. We found that, that the quality of life ratings for celibate LGBTQ Mormons and ex Mormons was, was super low.

John Dehlin [00:36:54] And that the only way to improve your quality of life was to either be sexually active in a non committal relationship by, but by far the healthiest choice you could make in terms of depression, quality of life, sexual identity, distress. All of the factors is to be sexually active in a committed relationship. And this directly challenges the Mormon Church's longstanding teaching that, quote, wickedness never was happiness. The Mormon Church would say that next to murder, the most wicked thing you could do would be to have sex, gay sex or lesbian sex or, you know, non sex outside of a Mormon marriage, basically. But what our findings show was that the opposite is true.

John Dehlin [00:37:42] Being sexually active in a mixed orientation marriage or celibate was misery like unto death. And being sexually active in a same sex committed relationship, you know, they say that, that men is that they might have joy. The best way to have joy in life for an LGBTQ Mormon was to be sexually active in a committed relationship. And that's just common sense by any mental health standard. And again, we did the same sort of analysis by relationship status and being single and in a mixed orientation marriage had the worst findings, way lower than those who reported lupus. But if you got into a non legal same sex relationship or, or a legal same sex relationship, you had your absolute best shot at reaching the healthy average of people just broadly in the United States.

John Dehlin [00:38:37] And again, these findings were published in one of the most reputable journals in the entire field of psychology. It's called the Journal of Counseling Psychology. Any psychologist would give a digitized by vjooqic, if not an entire limb to publish in the Journal of Counseling Psychology. And they were so impressed with this study that that's where they published these findings. Now, what I want to do before we talk about this next study, I'm actually going to move this study to after we talk about Ben and Charlie Bird, because I think that that is going to be where, where this study is most useful. So let me just pause right now and before we go on to this next portion, Tyler, let's get you in here to react to kind of what I just talked about. And then, and then, Gerardo, we'd love to get your feedback as well.

Mental Health Research and the Iron Rod Study

Tyler Perry [00:39:36] So the first thing that I'm thinking is what it sounds like you're saying, John, is that if you try to cling to the iron rod or hold to the iron rod, what you're going to find if you're lgbtq is that the fruit at the end is bitter and not delicious to the taste and very desirable above all other fruit.

John Dehlin [00:39:55] Absolutely, yeah. This is 1,612. Nobody's done a study this big. Nobody.

Tyler Perry [00:40:02] And you have statistically significant data. What I'm seeing in there are P values that are incredibly low. Where that significance is anything below zero, you did probably an alpha 0.95. Sorry. So if, yeah, that P number is less than 0.05, that means that what we're looking at is a big deal.

Tyler Perry [00:40:24] And all of those were big deals. I can tell you from personal experience, I have gone through those phases that were under discussion. And it tracks. This is anecdotal, but it tracks the single celibate side, the rejecting the LGBTQ identity site. It's miserable.

Tyler Perry [00:40:48] It's as close to what I imagine you could get to sort of the mental torment of Mormon hell as you can get in mortality. And if that's the promised blessing on the other side, which is what the church is offering right now, is that the promised blessing on the other side is that you get to reject that for eternity.

Tyler Perry [00:41:10] Yeah, that's a bum deal. The church needs to do better. And the data shows that if what Joseph Smith said, that Mormonism is truth, is truth circumscribed into a single hole, if that's what we actually hold to, then your study shows that we need to change, we need to be better, our movement is not cutting it, and we need to improve.

John Dehlin [00:41:33] I love it. Gerardo, what would you add?

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:36] I was at byu, Idaho when I found the results of your study. And I remember I. I wanted to cry because it was so validating to me, just having heard my whole life that dating or getting married to a same sex partner was gonna be the most miserable thing I could do. And then finding this study was just like, incredibly validating. And because, I don't know, people have to go hear my story. But I had experienced how we had, how it felt dating people, they of my same sex and people who I was attracted to. But yeah, I mean, it was. It's definitely groundbreaking.

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:25] And just these findings just prove, like Tyler was saying, that the church has to move in a different direction than what they've been doing. And just, just recently, Becky, Becky Borden, she. She works for the church, pretty high up, I think headquarters. And she is kind of like in charge of all the LGBTQ messaging in the church. And she gave a speech at BYU just a couple weeks before Holland Stock. And something she said. What she. She's lesbian or I think, and she was on a same sex marriage, but divorced her wife and now is on a mixed orientation marriage with her husband, who was also in a same sex marriage and now divorce his partner and now they're married together in a mixed orientation marriage. I guess not mixed orientation because they're both lgbt. But anyway, so that is mixed orientation marriage.

John Dehlin [00:43:35] It's kind of double. It's a double mixed orientation.

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:38] But something she said was that there.

Tyler Perry [00:43:42] That.

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:42] That she tackled this idea that staying in the church and. And being celibate and single, it's. It's not a way to be happy. And I would challenge what she was saying with this results, you know, the study, because that's literally the. The. The worst way to find happiness according to a well researched and published study. But that's all I have to say on that.

John Dehlin [00:44:13] I love it.

Tyler Perry [00:44:14] Jono, I want to push back on one. One thing that you said. I know you were saying it from the orthodox believing perspective, not from your own perspective, but if you actually read in Alma, chapter 39 and actually compare it to the story of Alma, the sin next to murder is not sex outside of marriage, it's very clearly not. And that's just one of those other wicked traditions of our fathers that needs to go.

John Dehlin [00:44:41] I love it. I love it. Okay, so what I think is really important now is that we address what the church has been doing for decades and what it continues to do, because, you know, it's one thing that the Church has been good for decades at surveying members, at consulting experts, and, you know, optimizing its practices.

John Dehlin [00:45:13] So if the church wanted to find out what the mental health professionals were saying in the 70s and 80s and 90s, what the LGBTQ Mormon experience was like in the 70s, 80s and 90s, they could have done it. And they either did it and didn't like the results, or they just chose not to do it. But. But what, you know, what this survey did with Dr. Bradshaw and I and others, is it put the church on notice with data, with evidence that the church was harming, you know, hundreds of thousands of its own members.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] And so what's particularly troubling, I think, Gerardo, because it's almost like a week doesn't go by where you don't mention Charlie or Ben or what's being said. And I don't mean to call them out or you out, but I think what's so alarming to you, Gerardo, is that the Church continues to do the same plays and the same playbooks. They are just recycling the spokespeople, but continuing the harm now when they know better. And so what this next part of the presentation is, is you guys to kind of walk us through what the Church has been doing historically and then why Ben and Charlie and others other current LGBTQ Mormon apologists represent the ongoing harm. Is that right?

Tyler Perry [00:46:40] Yeah, that's basically going to be our rundown. We are Going to skip past the 1970s and 1980s stuff, which is particularly atrocious, but we want to focus in kind of on more of what the modern church has done. Hinckley started to take this in a different direction once he took the helm, but it's also a more aggressive direction. So I think that that's kind of an interesting phase to start at because that's when the church gets publicly involved in this issue and and not when they're just having secret torture dungeons underneath the basements of byu.

John Dehlin [00:47:15] We'll be referring to the on the Record PDF in a bit. I do want to share. We have a couple of really great comments from our listeners. Swedish Lena says, gerardo, love your colored hair. It looks fantastic. We really appreciate the donation of Beck. Beck donated through our super chat feature on YouTube and Beck, we really appreciate that financial support. Beck also wrote, I rejected my religious identity, but I'm also 20 year, 21 years in a mixed orientation marriage, and it's very, very hard.

John Dehlin [00:47:49] And then we also. We have a really heartbreaking quote. Let's see, we've got a comment from Nathan Kitchen. Nathan, you're an important figure in this conversation. Nathan writes, the key is to create an LGBTQIA+ centric network of mentors and peers that focuses on the LGBTQIA+ experience and the places that feel safe and healthy for them. Thank you, Nathan. We're always glad to have you show up and provide feedback. Lamb Chop writes, I am 60 years old, was a true believing Mormon, so celibate, no children, still waiting for the joy I was promised. And that's some anecdotal evidence to back up the data that pretty much demonstrates without debate that the celibacy mixed orientation paths are a disaster, a mental health disaster for most who follow it.

John Dehlin [00:48:53] Okay, so without any further ado, go through how the church has dealt with the gay issues. Do you want to take us through this, Tyler?

Tyler Perry [00:49:02] Let's do it. So where we're going to start is actually here at the bottom left corner of the slide. So this slide has a series of pictures on it kind of representing the church's overall methods as well as some of the outside influences that it has had on its strategy. In that bottom left corner is a wonderful scholar by the name of Lynn Wardle. I am saying that sarcastically. Lynn Wardle was a BYU law professor who really latched on to this debate about same sex marriage when it became an issue at the Hawaii Supreme Court in 1995 with the bearer decision. And that was right at the time that it got kicked back from the Hawaii Supreme Court, back down to the trial court.

The Family Proclamation and Legal Strategy

Tyler Perry [00:49:47] It's a really fascinating story. We'll just kind of touch on the wave tops here. But Lynn Wardle hears about this story, wants the church to get involved. But he knows that the church doesn't have a real legal strategy. So he decides to start writing what would become the church's legal strategy for dealing with gay marriage.

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:05] Was this before Oakes was on? Do you know if this was before Oakes was involved in this?

Tyler Perry [00:50:11] So this appears to predate Oakes's direct involvement in this issue. It appears that Ward actually informs Oakes's own strategy. And we'll to kind of walk up towards that. We actually see that as the Family Proclamation is written about a week before that document gets released to the world, in the weird way that that happened, Oaks actually walked around a law review written by Lynn Wardle dealing with the gay marriage issue. So it's very clear that whatever Lynn Wardle was writing at the time was affecting Oakes own thoughts and strategies on the subject. And it does appear to have influenced the writing of the Family Proclamation.

Tyler Perry [00:51:00] Okay, so if we pop back up the slide here. Over on the right side of the slide, there's a picture of Jerry Falwell, who Mormon Stories listeners may or may not know. Jerry Falwell is one of the most prominent, or was one of the most prominent leaders in the evangelical right. He's responsible for what was called the Moral Majority. And the Moral Majority tried to get out in front of the gay marriage debate in Hawaii and got pushed back pretty much right away in pretty glorious fashion.

Tyler Perry [00:51:29] But he was heavily involved later on in subsequent campaigns, including in Alaska and then later on in California, Prop 22. A lot of his strategies for handling gay marriage from a political perspective, but also from a theological perspective, wind up serving as a model the church follows.

Tyler Perry [00:51:50] And then there's also the Family Research Council, led by Pat Dobson, which also has an immense influence on the church's strategy in handling this. It really does appear that. So the Family Research Council actually published a document a bit before, if I'm recalling my timeline correctly, a bit before the Family Proclamation comes out. That looks very, very similar to the Family Proclamation. If you remove all the Mormon. Mormon knees from the. The Family Proclamation, you basically wind up with the Family Research Council's own documents on it. There's a few other documents that appear to contribute as well.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:27] They even use very similar language, like we proclaim and we like. And it's all about the family and the Roles of women and men in the family and children.

Tyler Perry [00:52:38] It's all, it's almost like reading the Synoptic Gospels and getting the, the same story over and over again. And sometimes you get the exact same language used in different spots and sometimes it's slightly changed. Yeah, it seems like where the church decided to put its own Mormonology into it. There's some unique language and then in other places that they're almost plagiarizing those other documents.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:03] Yeah. And this, this, the first time I heard about this was by researcher, his name is Taylor Petrie where, where he, he, he recently released a book called Tabernacles of Clay where he talks about this. And, and I think this really challenges the idea that the Family Proclamation is a revelation or this like amazing, unprecedented document. RFM and Bill Real have also done a couple episodes talking about the history of the Family Proclamation. But probably the nail on the coffin for me was when Taylor Petrie showed. And I mean I, I don't, I'm not saying other people haven't done it before, but he showed these other documents from other organizations from years prior to the Family Proclamation that like Tyler was saying, look exactly, almost exactly the same as the Family Proclamation, the Mormon Family Proclamation.

Tyler Perry [00:54:05] And one of the reasons why I want to highlight this is because this is showing what is in part an emerging strategy, but it appears to be a rather consistent strategy since Hinckley's administration of moving the church more in line with the evangelical right, making the church from this peculiar religion where we are able to explore really interesting and robust theology and moving it into this very sequestered, tight and very narrow theology that the evangelical right employs.

Tyler Perry [00:54:39] And so when you look at the theology of the Jerry Falwell's Junior and Senior and your Kent Hovinds and others, these are very thin theologies that don't have a lot of space for diversity of thought or for debate or new insight. And that is so antithetical to what Mormonism should be. And yet that's the direction that they're moving. And I really want to highlight that part of where we can see the evidence of this is in the same sex marriage debate. That's one of the most glowing examples of that exact problem.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] Yeah, I'll just, I'll just add my two cents, which is that, you know, I'm 52 years old, growing up in the 80s in Mormonism in the Bible Belt in Katy, Texas near Houston. Number one, the evangelicals were out to get us. They were publishing the God Makers. They were showing it in Every local church, they were out to get us. And, you know, we were God's one true church. Our prophets spoke with God. They were the counterfeit Christians, and they were our enemies for all intents and purposes. So it's so weird to learn that in, you know, in the 20, the 2000s, the 2010s, and now the 2020s, they're our buddies.

John Dehlin [00:55:56] They're actually the ones inspiring our church leaders on issues. So instead of God inspiring our prophets, our former enemies are now inspiring our prophets, and we're teaming up with them. And it's our own members that are the enemies, the LGBTQ community, and it's the evangelicals that are our friends.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] And we're not being led by God, but instead we're being led by evangelical Christians. It's a weird turn on Mormonism that it's hard for me to even recognize, you know, growing up in the church.

Tyler Perry [00:56:29] So. So John, when you went through the temple, was Satan hanging out with the. The Protestants

John Dehlin [00:56:36] hanging out with the minister who had a caller who was preaching a sermon to, you know, because they changed the temple ceremony?

Tyler Perry [00:56:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] But, yeah, those are the bad guys. The Catholic Church and the Protestants were the great and abominable church. Right, right.

Tyler Perry [00:56:50] That's who's teaching the philosophies of that. That's just teaching the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:55] Not.

Tyler Perry [00:56:55] Not Satan. It's. It's.

John Dehlin [00:56:56] Yeah, yeah. Now we are buddied up with the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.

Tyler Perry [00:57:01] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:57:02] And Greek Prince, like this amazing Mormon historian, he. He also wrote a book called the Gay Rights on Mormon Church. He. He recognizes that. That this cozy relationship between Protestants, Protestants and religions and the Catholic Church with the Mormon Church really started because of these efforts of fighting gay marriage. The church realized if we joined our efforts with this other religious organizations, we might have a lot like a stronger case to fight this on the courts.

Tyler Perry [00:57:41] Now, if we really wanted to walk that back, we could actually trace it all the way back to the feminist movements or the anti feminist movements of the church. We'll get into that later a little bit. I think it's an important note to point out, since you brought that up, Gerardo, is that this is heavily tied in with anti feminism. Petrie deals with that in Tabernacles of Clay.

Tyler Perry [00:57:59] Very interesting history with that as well. But I want to walk through now just a little bit. So, as I mentioned, I'm a California Mormon. I was a California Mormon through both Prop 22 and Proposition 8. Prop 22 kicked in right at about the point where I first would have had any possibility of associating the word gay with my own identity. So that pushed me really deep into the closet, because gay was bad. And here we were trying to oppose that. And then Prop 22. I'm a teenager of Prop 22. So Prop 22 rolls out right as I'm getting into adulthood. And again, if you wanted to start climbing out of the pit of being stuck in the closet, that's going to kick you right back in pretty hard.

Church Involvement in Proposition 8

Tyler Perry [00:58:45] Prop 22 is not really the sexy part of this story. Most people know the story of Prop 8 because of how involved the church got, how public that was, and how much it backfired. But Prop 22 is really where the church's strategy that they would employ in Prop 8 actually gets tested out. And so just a little bit of history there. Prop 22 was introduced by a man by the name of Pete Knight. He was a representative in the state of California, had a gay son, ironically enough, wasn't a fan of the gays. And he introduces this bill to the state for them to vote on.

Tyler Perry [00:59:23] And the church gets wind of this, and they've had their bids in Hawaii already, and they've had their bids in Alaska, and they've kind of got this working formula of a legal strategy, and they've realized that one thing that they can do in California is lean on these other coalitions. So you have your evangelical right that's already getting involved. They're already in the mix, shaking things up. The Catholic Bishops association is getting involved. I mean, there's a lot of Christian organizations already mobilized on this issue. And the church realizes that they can cooperate with these groups to promote this amendment, this bill, this proposition.

Tyler Perry [01:00:02] And so they send two different letters. The first letter says, hey, we want to support Proposition 22. We want to get that passed. And this was like, I think, from the area presidency. And then they go to the next level, higher with the second letter, and they say there's going to be more instructions to follow. Just hold tight. So this goes out to just direct you to the bishops. It's not read in the meetings. The second letter comes out, and it has a rather unique instruction, and that is to go after the members who are basically the wealthiest first and ask them for donations.

Tyler Perry [01:00:35] And when this gets leaked publicly, Sunstone has a field day with this. And they published a whole fantastic article talking about the church's involvement here. And the church is more quietly involved in Proposition 8 or Proposition 22. They're able to stay under the radar, but they get kicked to the Curb with Proposition 8. They wind up becoming the public face of it. And so this strategy that they employ with Prop 22 winds up backfiring on them.

Church Responses to Same-Sex Issues Over Decades

Tyler Perry [01:01:06] But where I think that this actually happens and where. So obviously we're talking about LGBT issues, I think that this comes with kind of a. And in the church, this comes with a nascent content warning. But I do want to mention here that there's going to be a little bit of discussion of suicide.

Tyler Perry [01:01:26] So there were three rather public suicides that occurred of Stuart Mattis, D.J. thompson, and Klay Whitmer. And these three men were their LDs, young gay men. They all sort of had a connection with each other. I think D.J. thompson had the least connection, direct connection with the other two. Stuart Mattis was the first one and probably the most public one. And he's the one who gets mentioned later on in Ty Mansfield's book.

Tyler Perry [01:01:56] And this was a very public issue, and the Church tried to distance themselves from it, from having any association with their involvement in Proposition 22. But his own writings, Stuart Mattis own writings to friends and family heavily indicate that if the Church had not been so publicly involved in Proposition 22 and had actually been more affirming, had been more accepting, things could have gone differently.

Tyler Perry [01:02:24] It really seems that things very well could have gone differently for him if the Church had been better than they were. And it's one of the first real public LDS tragedies associated with this. All the other ones are pretty. I mean, there are others definitely before, but they're more quiet, under the radar. They don't come out until later. This one was public on the face of it, and the Church appears to have receded into seclusion a little bit, focusing solely on Utah afterwards before they get involved in Proposition 8. Trying that strategy. Again, a lot of fascinating history here, but there's a pattern of behavior that is really worth exploring.

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:04] Yeah, I think this just shows where the Church's current teachings are based. This was all based on. They. The Church was rushing during this time to come out with statements, to come out with the family proclamation, to come out with, where is the Church gonna stand on this? And they were just mimicking other religions. I think why this is important to mention is because this just shows how. How little revelation the Church has, has really gotten or have like these. The current teachings are based on. They're based on very shaky grounds. You can argue that, like, if prophets really had the revelations and, and, and, and communication to. With God like they would have foreseen how badly this all was gonna end. And at the end of the day Prop 8 really actually helped past same sex marriage, which was, which is ironically.

Tyler Perry [01:04:10] Yeah, it backfires in a big, big way. And the church gets a lot of egg on its face for, for that whole experience with Proposition 8. So it was bad. It was bad. In my own personal experience. It kind of winds up being a net good for the overall movement though because we do wind up getting Obergia fell and other, other decisions that really get a lot of traction because of the publicity on Proposition 8. Really changing the cultural zeitgeist.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:35] Right.

John Dehlin [01:04:36] So that's a good overview if you

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:38] want to go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [01:04:40] John.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:42] So on this one I just wanted to talk briefly about how the church is handling like starts handling this the, the issue internally because there's members that are homosexual. Right. That are coming like that are struggling with the same sex challenge or in quotes I'm saying that. But so something that happens is there's this weird dynamic where the church through apostles and prophets like Spencer W. Kimball, Markey Peterson are, are being in charge of coming up with what's the church. How is the church going to help on this, on these issues? They come out with like official manuals and like, like on the right side you can see like ld, you have the big logo, LDS Family Services.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:38] And then two manuals that were officially published by the church. The one on the left, Homosexuality called Homosexuality. This was for bishops and state presidents. And it's just basically mirroring what was also happening on non official kind of like LDS also sources. What, what was happening is like also members wanted to help with this and people like Dave Matheson, Dean Bird, they were come like that were. That's what we're into the field of psychology started being involved in this.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:14] Organizations like Evergreen, that we're promoting that, that homosexuality could be changed and that it could be fixed, it could be cured. It was a dis. It was like a deceased. It could be. And that you could potentially eventually go from being a homosexual to a heterosexual. And this is, this was a long several decades of the church just uh, preaching this rhetoric to its members and um, to, to that this is how they would deal with gay people in the church.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] And if I can just jump in, it wasn't just Mormons. This is again when the real partnership with evangelicals and Catholics and even Orthodox Jews really begins in earnest. Because the evangelicals have Exodus International, the Jews have Jews offering new approaches to healing.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:14] And every Major religious group has their own version of Evergreen. And it turns out that the leaders of our version were working with the leaders of their version and we were all sharing notes. And it was all this huge exercise of trying to manipulate the scientific community and do scientifically scientific and mental health malpractice to, to teach people that they can, if they just learn the right things, if they just change their relationships or heal their relationships with their parents, if they just go on enough hiking expeditions and chop wood and throw the football and have healthier relationships with other gay men, that somehow they're going to fix their gayness.

John Dehlin [01:08:08] Along with conversion therapies like the electroshock therapy in the 70s at BYU where they would hook up the genitals of gay men to shock, you know, electrodes, show them gay pornography and then literally shock them. That was the most violent of the ways that they tried to change people's sexual orientation. But, but they also had an army of mental health professionals, psychologists, you know, licensed clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists that were all church approved in this network of LDS family services, along with an army of books, you know, a library of books sold at Deseret Book. And it was all against the, you know, the ethical codes of all the major mental health networks, including the American Psychiatric association, the American Psychological association, the American Counseling Psychological association, the American Medical Association.

John Dehlin [01:09:05] All of them denounced these practices. And the church was behind them anyway, 1,000%. And Dean Bird and then people like Dave Matheson, who ran the journey into manhood with Ty Mansfield, by the way, would lead just thousands and thousands of young gay men into these camps where they claimed that if you paid enough money and spent enough time, they could heal you of your same sex attraction. And it was all psychologically bankrupt and incredibly damaging.

Gerardo Sumano [01:09:38] Yeah, yeah. And it's very. It was very different. Sorry, Tyler, go ahead.

Tyler Perry [01:09:43] Oh, oh, no, sorry. I'm feeling a little bit snarky and wanting to say it sounds like if they pay enough money, they'll get rid of your body fatans for you.

John Dehlin [01:09:53] If it weren't, if it didn't lead to an epidemic of death by suicide, depression and anxiety and broken marriages, it would be hilarious.

Tyler Perry [01:10:05] But we laugh so we don't cry. Right.

John Dehlin [01:10:07] It did lead to all that and we got what we got between 2008 and. But, but that's ignoring all the, all the problems before. So basically from the 70s to now, we have an epidemic, a literal epidemic. Utah leads the nation, you know, top five, if not number one in, in suicidality and. Or death by Suicide for LGBT youth and young adults. And so it's a tragedy. And just go check out the movie Believer, HBO documentary that, that does a decent job at talking about this. But also, Gerardo, there's a recent. Was it a Netflix or a Hulu documentary? Which.

Gerardo Sumano [01:10:48] Yeah, yeah, Netflix. Pray Away.

John Dehlin [01:10:52] Pray Away. It's a great documentary. We should include that in the show. Notes that, that, that chronicles this history from an evangelical standpoint. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:11:02] And this, like, again, like you said, the same thing was happening in Mormonism. Now today I've seen apologists or people trying to say that the church, you know, really was not promoting conversion therapy, really ever. That that was like organizations made by individuals, members of the church that wanted to help. So the people at Evergreen were not really official, like from the church. In reality, they were funded by the church. They were getting money from the church. But that's why I also, I wanted to add in this slide, just right next to it, the LDS Family Services was super involved with all this stuff officially. But like, just from.

John Dehlin [01:11:41] I, I just have to respond to that. That's a total lie. The church would have either a general authority or an emeritus general authority on the board of Evergreen. Every year that Evergreen did a keynote, they would have a general authority or an emeritus general authority speak at the conference. They would support it with LDS Family Services, and the church would host these Evergreen conferences on church property for years, if not decades. And the church would siphon money to Evergreen through its rich donors and through all the, all the financial means that it has. So that's just outright lies and dishonesty when people now try and say Evergreen was an independent organization, the church is smart enough to set up these non profits so that it can have plausible deniability, but the church was 1,000% behind Evergreen. That's just a complete lie.

Tyler Perry [01:12:39] Yeah, Dean Birds published in the Incent as well, at least once or twice. I remember reading one of his articles and it's the same stuff. It's the Evergreen content. It's the north content.

John Dehlin [01:12:51] Actually, he wasn't national association of Reparative Therapies or narth. Dean Bird sat at the table with the Quorum of the twelve in the First Presidency. He was their right hand man with regards to the LGBTQ issue for decades.

Tyler Perry [01:13:06] Yeah, it's inseparable. The apologists have to walk away from that idea completely. Just denounce that notion that the church is not involved and the church was heavily involved and it's blatantly apparent.

John Dehlin [01:13:23] Yeah, absolutely.

Mixed-Orientation Marriages and Church Promotion

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:26] So if you want to go to the Next slide.

John Dehlin [01:13:28] John.

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:29] There at the same time as Evergreen was going on, there was this two guys mainly Time Mansfield, like you said he was. It's weird. I think Time Mansfield, he's a pretty high profile person in the LGBT community, or was. He has lost a lot of popularity. But back then, back when I, when like my parents found out I was gay, Time as well, joined with Dave Matheson, like was the biggest figure in, in the. In this space. He's in a mixed orientation marriage. Marriage. He identifies as, or used to identify as semi sex attracted. I don't know if he identifies as gay now. He is a. He married his wife and had kids and he was on the COVID of the Ensign.

John Dehlin [01:14:15] And

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:18] so him jointly with this other guy, um, Jeff Bennion started this project core called Voices of Hope where they. Jeff Benion is also in the same situation as Ty and they gather stories and videos of people on mixed orientation marriages, mainly some celibacy, but not really. I mean the church hasn't has a history of attacking celibacy and, and mocking the Catholic Church for, For promoting celibacy. So. So at this point in time, like mixed orientation marriage was the route to go. Right. And, and then your conversion therapy thing. But you like Ty Mansfield, studied psychology too. I think he was, from what I've heard him saying a few podcasts is that he was trying to find a different approach than Evergreen. Maybe not get too involved with like directly saying that.

Tyler Perry [01:15:14] That.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:15] That homosexuality could be cured like through therapy, but just kind of like promoting this marriages of mixed orientation marriage. Look, look how happy these people can be. This led to the, the tlc. If you go to the next slide at this TLC show called My Husband's Not Gay, which was canceled later, uh, in which actually Jeff Bennion is. Was a part of it and just showing how, how this dynamic was worked and how they would promote it. So if you want to play that.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] Yeah, Gerardo, before we jump to that, I just want to say my, my understanding of the history is that when the church started to see, you know, when our research started coming out, when lawsuits started to emerge against, you know, against not only Evergreen, but also Exodus International and Jonah, when people like Michael Ferguson and others started suing the church and the church saw the writing on the wall and when the. When the scientific evidence started proving our prophets, seers and revelators wrong, as it has for 200 years, basically Ty Mansfield represented the church's attempt. Again, this. We're going to, we're going to be talking today about this Idea of recycling celebrities or spokespeople, Gay spokespeople.

John Dehlin [01:16:40] So we had Dean Bird, we had the, you know, the Evergreen International folks, we had Dave Matheson and others. And the church saw that that dog wasn't hunting that, you know, that fishing pole wasn't fishing. And so as it's phasing out, as it's phasing out Evergreen, it's saying, oh, new and approved. It's bringing Ty Mansfield on with Jeff Bennion. It's investing now in voices of Hope. And it's also frankly promoting Josh and Lollie Weed, who is a very public example of a mixed orientation marriage where Josh would say, I'm gay, but I'm in a happy. I love Lolly. I'm lolly sexual, Josh would say. And of course, the church would promote this new crop.

John Dehlin [01:17:29] And so this is where we introduce this concept of recycling. It's taper out the old without any accountability and then ramp up and taper in the new. And so Ty Mansfield with Jeff, with Northstar became, you know, version two of this recycling along with Josh and Lolly Weed and others and the voices of hope. And so this trailer just represents sort of like this second generation of like new and improved gay, gay men and lesbian women who were same sex attracted, not gay or lesbian, but were able to make their mixed orientation marriages work. Is that all right? Yeah, I just had to say that.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:10] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:18:10] Okay, so let's play this little clip. Is that okay?

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:13] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:18:14] Okay.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [01:18:19] With a new reality show sparking all kinds of debate.

Video Clip 1 [01:18:22] It's called My Husband's Not Gay.

Video Clip 1 [01:18:24] It follows a group of Mormon men married to women but attracted to men. ABC Cecilia Vega has the story.

Video Clip 1 [01:18:31] I'm attracted to my wife for sure. And I'm definitely attracted to men, too.

Video Clip 1 [01:18:37] It's the upcoming reality show stirring a real life controversy this morning.

Video Clip 1 [01:18:42] I don't know how to tell you

Video Clip 1 [01:18:44] this, but I'm attracted to men.

Video Clip 1 [01:18:46] My Husband's not gay. Set to air on TLC Sunday, it features what TLC calls unconventional Mormon marriages, following Mormon men in Salt Lake City, Utah, who don't identify as gay, even though they say they are attracted to men.

Video Clip 1 [01:19:02] So are they gay or not?

Video Clip 1 [01:19:04] The show also features the women who love them, their wives who know about their husband's preferences and try to make their marriages work. I was office mates with one of my best friends and I said, he

Video Clip 1 [01:19:17] told me he's gay.

Video Clip 1 [01:19:18] And she goes, I told you that twice. Couples like Jeff and Tanya, introduced on a blind date and married for 10

Video Clip 1 [01:19:26] years, you could say I'm oriented toward donuts. And if I was being true to myself, I would eat donuts a lot more than I eat donuts. But am I miserable? Am I lonely? Am I denying myself because I don't eat donuts as much as I might like to eat donuts? And I'm not.

Video Clip 1 [01:19:45] Pret and Morgan met in Sunday school 17 years ago. They've been married for nearly nine.

Video Clip 1 [01:19:50] Every time I got to the core of who I am, I knew that I wanted to be married to a woman, and I knew that I wanted children and I wanted to be a father. And I want to be called Daddy when I come home.

Video Clip 1 [01:20:01] But this morning, critics are fired up. Some demanding TLC pull the show. More than 70,000 people even signing this change.org petition that says my husband's not gay promotes the false and dangerous idea that gay people can and should choose to be straight in order to be part of their faith communities. It's irresponsible to be airing a show with the content that gives the idea that sexual orientation is a choice. And that's a discredited and old idea. Overnight, TLC responding, telling ABC News the stars of the one hour special reveal the decisions they have made and speak only for themselves.

Tyler Perry [01:20:43] And just like I can't choose not to be gay, I can't choose not to be a person of faith. So my challenge is to come to some reconciliation.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:53] Well, these men say they're doing what God would want them to do. TLC says this show is like so many others. It produces about real people and different ways of life. So far, even with this controversy, they still plan to air it. Guys, it's probably makes for some good reality tv, but it's got a lot

John Dehlin [01:21:08] of people fired up.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:09] The gay community community is really fired up about it. It's just as the woman said there from Glad to give, even give. The idea that it is a choice can be very dangerous, especially for young people who are dealing with their sexuality

Tyler Perry [01:21:23] and trying to figure things out. So.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:26] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:21:26] Well, if you want to watch yourself

Tyler Perry [01:21:28] and make up your own mind, My husband's not gay. Air is on TLC on Sunday, January 11.

John Dehlin [01:21:37] I'm kind of curious if you guys have any reactions watching that. I wanted to pause it at a few points and get your reactions.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:43] I think watching that today, it's pretty shocking, you know, like, but it really shows like where things were at just like about a decade ago or less.

John Dehlin [01:21:55] What parts are shocking?

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:56] Gerardo Just a lot of the things that the reasoning that they use, like the donuts example trying to compare that to same sex.

John Dehlin [01:22:09] What's wrong with that comparison?

Gerardo Sumano [01:22:13] Like dude, I don't know. Like, like really comparing like one type of food to just like the person that, that you are naturally attracted to and that many people today except that that's how people are born. And like there is a lot of research regarding like that's how, how we're born. But anyway, so, and, and then just saying like well I'm gonna do this, it's kind of like saying yeah, I'm not, I don't know. To me it's, I think the comparison would be better is like I, I like, I like all types of sweets, but I'm just gonna eat broccoli the rest of, of my life. Oh you. And I hate broccoli. So. But, but I like this type of. I don't know, it's just weird. I don't know how he can we all agree the.

John Dehlin [01:23:09] Probably the, the, the church itself says that the most important decision you'll ever make is who you marry, when you marry, how you marry, etc. Like what's more important than your life partner, right? Like some would argue that's more important than your own children. Like that is the single most important decision that most of us will ever make. Probably more important than career because it's core to our identity, it's core to our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health, just everything. And that's what our data, the data that I just showed, it shows the single most important decision you can make is to find a committed partner to spend your life with. So to compare it with something as trivial as eating a donut or not eating a donut, it's ridiculous and offensive and I'm not even gay and I'm outraged by that comparison.

Tyler Perry [01:24:05] All I can do is just laugh because otherwise I will cry. It's terrible. I too would like to come home and be called daddy. Yeah, it's. This is, this is terrible. I mean, just through and through. This idea that it's a choice at all is obviously fallacious. Every theory that the church has ever advanced on the cause of homosexuality has not borne fruit to bear out. You know, when they said at first that it was because you masturbate, well, got news for just about everybody on that one. It's also funny that a lot of the rhetoric at this time, and maybe a little bit before this, it seems to imply that if same sex marriage was legalized, everybody would choose to do it. It's weird. This is just bonkers. It's, I'M at a loss, I'm at a loss for words. That was, and that was special.

John Dehlin [01:25:13] And what that show, it kept focusing, the little excerpt with ABC News that we showed, it kept focusing on this idea that it's a choice which, which the church believed at the time. Now with the research, we've sort of beat the church into submission on that point. The church is now recognizing that you don't choose your sexual orientation and that it can't be changed. But what that whole dialogue missed was the, which was the travesty of mixed orientation marriages. Not just for the same sex attracted partner that now has to live with someone that not only they aren't necessarily emotionally or sexually attracted to, but they might experience emotional or sexual aversion with.

John Dehlin [01:25:59] Right. You know, you heard these accounts, and you still do, of these gay men or these lesbian women when they try and have sexual relations with their, with their spouse, they have to turn over and sob afterwards because it was such a revolting experience for them. Imagine if that was the expectation every day. Not to mention being a, a straight partner with a spouse that doesn't find you attractive and that doesn't want to be with you. And that is trying to find any excuse to not have to be in bed with you or to have any sexual and sometimes even emotional connection with you. Those marriages, we found that 70% of those mixed orientation marriages at a minimum ended in divorce, which was, which was twice or three times the failure rate of normal Mormon heterosexual marriages.

John Dehlin [01:26:52] It's just, it's like a mental health. It's just a mental health travesty. And none of that was really touched on in that little excerpt.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:05] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [01:27:05] It's critical to point out again that this is a pattern. It's the cycle we saw before that we skipped over all the stuff in the past. We got into the church going through this cycle of moving in the direction of the rest of the Christian world. And then they're going to make some more modifications a little bit with Evergreen at the time and fall in line with that as that moves. Then they get into this stuff. Then the data comes out shows that mixed orientation marriages don't work and that sexual orientation is an immutable trait. And now they're at the point where they're saying we don't know which. Good for them on admitting that they don't know. But they need to stop with the other stuff as well.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:46] I hope that listeners can see a progression here as far. Like we started with Dean Baird and Dave Matheson with this and Evergreen with This idea that homosexuality could be completely cured. You can be become like homosexual to heterosexual. And you don't even have to mention that you had same sex attraction before because like now that's gone. Now we are at a point where people like Ty Mansville and Jeff Bennion are accepting, like, hey, the same sex attraction may stay forever, but I'm attracted to my wife and she may be the only person, the only women that I'm attracted to and I can make it work. And these like, again, these led to the project Voices of Hope. And if you go to the next slide, John.

Listener Comments and Systems Versus People

John Dehlin [01:28:33] Hey, Gerardo, really quickly if it's okay, let's just, let's just include a few comments because we've getting some good comments from our listeners. Person of interest writes, as long as you have homophobic leaders, the faithful will stay homophobic. They have to die out. That's person of interest point of view. We appreciate that being shared. Brittany reminds us something, Gerardo, that we talked about before the show. Brittany says, I've met Ben. Tell us Ben's last name again. Shilati Shilotti. Brittany says, I've met Ben Shilati. He really is doing what he thinks is best in his heart.

John Dehlin [01:29:10] Brittany reminds us that it's systems, not people, we agree with. We are not here trying to denounce Ben or Charlie. I would guess that we would characterize them more as victims than as perpetrators. And I think that goes the same for Ty Mansfield and Jeff Bennion and Dean Byrd. It is the Mormon church at its core, the prophets, the first presidency, the Quorum of the twelve, the leadership of the church and the church itself that is responsible. We are not here to bash Ben or Charlie or Ty or Jeff or Dean Bird or Dave Matheson. So we really appreciate, Brittany, that that reminder. Do you guys agree with that? Systems, not people.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:55] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [01:29:55] Brittany, I promise you that we are going to get to the point where we will actually be showing a full measure of love out towards Ben and Charlie as we go through this. Right now we're in the reproof phase of this whole thing. There's going to be the outpouring of love that follows.

John Dehlin [01:30:10] Casey Kirk writes. Casey Kirk 3 writes, the biggest problem with the donut analogy is the poor wife that has to suffer with the spouse that cannot give her the full love that a straight partner could give her. That's a huge one and, and you know, that's one of the many problems. June Tunes writes, I basically, I too would like to come home and be called Daddy. June Tune Says that's got me laughing. Glad we could have some humor. I think a lot of our straight. Our straight listeners missed that joke. I caught it.

John Dehlin [01:30:43] But we appreciate that as well. Let's see. Sam Wolf writes. We shout out to Sam Wolf. He's done a lot of important work. I think if it's the same Wolf I know who worked for the Southern Poverty Leadership Center, I think that's the same Sam Wolf. He writes. In the meantime, these guys were regulars at Journey beyond, the advanced and top secret conversion therapy weekends in the woods for their guide time. Yeah. So this is talking about the hypocrisy, the double lives that we're going to be talking about later. And I think he's talking about the journey into manhood retreats that we will refer to. Well, in just a second. Go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:23] No, not just that. As the same has this air was as this show was airing. And I think even on the show they showed how this background that these organizations like Northstar have of just super disgust, disgusting double life that these guys were living where like they are having this nude cuddle parties.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:52] So when, when the case. When Michael Ferguson sued Jonah, this Jewish conversion therapy organization, Jeff Bennion was one of the ones that were. Jeff Bennion who was on this, that we saw on this clip was called to testify about Journey into My journey into manhood, I think and just about his practices as a North Star person. And he admits to hold naked cuddle parties with other gay men on court and while being involved with North Star.

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:34] And so as you're seeing like this man just talking about how much they love their wives, how they're making it work as this time as they. At the same time they're having this naked cuddle parties with other men in the b. In basements, in hotels. Like Kyle Asworth told us about this.

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:54] So it's just this double life. So they're presenting this face to the church, to people, to this upcoming LGBT generation, while behind the scenes they're just. I don't know if you could call it cheating to their wives. I don't know how much the wives knew.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:14] But this is well recorded. And today Jeff Benion will try to deny all this. But this is, this is. He testified on a court of law about all this stuff under penalty of perjury.

John Dehlin [01:33:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just don't think. And yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put in the show notes Kyle Ashworth's interview about this. But I just think that's. That's one of the things we're going to call out later is just the real hypocrisy. Because, because while, while the church paid for and supported people like Ty Mansfield and Jeff Bennion and continue to do so and funneled their, you know, gay and lesbian members to these organizations like North Star, like Evergreen with the sacred tithing funds through the bishops, through LDS Family Services, all the members and even the straight spouses are thinking that, wow, okay, we've got this problem under control.

John Dehlin [01:34:12] We can all be living the gospel. Whether it's the journey to manhood retreats or these North Star cuddle parties. Like you said, Gerardo, they're sexually embracing each other naked under this bankrupt mental health sort of philosophy that somehow if you get gay Mormon men to cuddle nakedly in private, often without their wives knowing, that somehow that will either satisfy their urges or cure their same sex sexuality. And what you really got was a bunch of infidelity, either emotional or sexual infidelity, that betrays the law of chastity in, in all the ways that the Church taught us forever. And this stuff is still going on today.

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:54] And, and let's. Not to mention the predatory, this is a predatory practice because this new young gay man, recently married to their wives, they're introduced to organization. They were introduced to organizations like North Star. I don't know if this cuddle parties are still happening. I think Carl said that they might be still happening. They're, they're being groomed into coming to this, to these parties. And it's just, it's just all, if any, if you go and read the court hearing and, and just Jeff Benion's testimony is absolutely disgusting. The things that, that were going on.

John Dehlin [01:35:37] Yeah, yeah. So, so again, systems, not people. But, but this, you know, and the biggest problem of all is that there's no mental health evidence, there's no psychological evidence supporting any of these programs. Journey into Manhood, North Star, Evergreen. It's all bankrupt.

Gerardo Sumano [01:35:56] It.

John Dehlin [01:35:56] You're, you're not gay because your, your dad was distant and your mother was overbearing. You're not gay because you didn't have the right relationships with sports or with hiking or camping or fishing or, you know, athletics. You know, none of those are the things that cause you to be gay. It's not because you were sexually abused as a child. It's because of a combination of genetics and hormonal influences in the womb. And everybody who studies the science knows that by now. And so because the Mormon Church has held science with suspicion, has cared more about Prophetic authority than evidence and science based mental health. They've relied on these bankrupt philosophies to the detriment of tens or hundreds of thousands of gay, lesbian, transgender members and their straight spouses and their families for decades. And so, you know, that's where we are.

Northstar and the New Celibacy Movement

Tyler Perry [01:36:53] And I want to grab this through line real quick if I can. So we've talked about the church's past history and aligning with the evangelical right in dealing with the gay marriage issue or the issue of homosexuality among its membership. That follows into Evergreen where they're following the exact same patterns that are laid out by other evangelical movements. And with Jonah and this particular group with North Star and some of the things we're seeing with the non North Star, but still somewhat tangential to that apologist, is actually very consistent with sort of the neo conversion therapy that's arising in the evangelical right. And if you watch the, the Pray Away documentary, you'll see this exact same type of group showing up at the end of that documentary.

Tyler Perry [01:37:43] After they deal with all the stuff that's similar to Evergreen, they're going to jump right into the stuff that's similar to Northstar and kind of say, where's this going to go? Because the same pattern over and over again.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:53] Yeah, yeah. And that's where I was going with this slide as well. Northstar has had a revamping from all that dark past and now they're denying they were ever like, kind of like involved with all that crazy conversion therapy. Their gen venue will deny that like this cuddle party stuff.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:12] And, and North Star is now embraced by even. I don't know, I would, I don't know. This, this is my own opinion. There's a lot of people that love Richard Osler, but rich like people like Richard Osler, who has a big voice in the progressive community and LGBT allies.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:35] He highly supports organizations like North Star today. Not realizing that this organization has a pretty, a really dark past, including their own, the people that run it. So, but anyway, so yeah, this revamping has really helped the image of North Star. And now the focus is on Jesus. This last, this last conference they had this, this just a couple months ago they called, called a Trust on the Lord. They're not really talking about promoting mixed orientation marriages as much. Kind of like just follow your own path, stay faithful in the church kind of thing. So, so, so yeah, that's, that's kind of like the evolution that has happened there with, with Norse are.

John Dehlin [01:39:24] All right, well, let's keep, let's keep going. We Got a lot of slides to go. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:39:30] And this just shows how the church was mimicking at the same time that all this was happening. We showed how the church mimicked Evergreen and then the church also mimicked like what was going on with this evolutions of like organizations like Northstar promoting people in mixed orientation marriages, but also hey look, you can be celibate and happy creating. They created this website called Mormon and Gay, then later called Mormon. No, it was Mormons and Gay then Mormon and Gay with stories of people just saying like look, I'm celibate, look I'm in mixed orientation marriage and I'm making it work. I'm faithful, I love the church, I love Jesus.

Gerardo Sumano [01:40:11] And most of these videos are now taken down because these people were well decided to either leave the church or just follow just their, their own path of just getting same sex partners and either marrying or just finding same sex relationships. People like Jessica for Fulmer, like she was pretty famous for being one of the main voices on, on the church's website about hey, some celibacy and make it work. This was pretty groundbreaking. I remember when it came out because at this point when before this the church was not really promoting celibacy as a, as a viable path for living faithful life in the church, you know, because again the church has never really liked celibacy.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:06] But having Jessica's story was pretty groundbreaking. But what happened was like just a few late years later after it was published, they took down the video because Jessica found a partner and decided to get married.

Tyler Perry [01:41:21] Funny how that works.

John Dehlin [01:41:22] Yeah, yeah. And that's been true for so many of the doc. The, the video testimonials that the church put up on the Mormon and Gay Mormons and Gays Mormon and Gay website iterations. They, they put forward these spokespeople as if they are either celibate or living in successful happy mixed orientation marriages. Then when it turns out that they were lying, leading double lives and or their lives blow up because those paths of celibacy or mixed orientation marriages are literally damaging, unhealthy and unsustainable. The church stays silent and then just recycles a new crop of spokespeople.

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:06] Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Perry [01:42:07] I do think that there's an interesting sort of aberration in this story though that doesn't have anything to do with the people involved, but more with the church. And that's the fact what we've been talking about but not addressing and that's the Mormons and gays and then the change to Mormon and gay. So in 2012, it was Mormons and gays.

Tyler Perry [01:42:26] And the church received quite a bit of criticism from people that, that seemed to be rather divisive and that they should rename it. And they changed the name under that criticism to Mormon and gay, which was better in terms of its inclusivity of those members. So to the church's credit, they made those changes.

Tyler Perry [01:42:45] The problem with that statement is if you look at the timelines, they did that change in 2016. So at the same time, they were keeping our kids from being able to be baptized and they were excommunicating us if we decided to get married. So, yeah, you know, you take your wins where you can get them. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:04] And I just really quickly want to mention too, how sometimes damaging this, this website and projects like Northstar end up being, because people like, in my experience, while I was at home, you know, trying to find out, like my own sexuality, my own sexual orientation, my parents finding out, these people are held up that are held up by the church, are used as a weapon by parents, by family members, by church leaders, as, look, you can obviously make it work and be happy. Look at all these people that are making it work. So, and, and, and, and their stories are weaponized against youth and LGBT members of the church who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives and how to find happiness.

John Dehlin [01:43:58] Yeah. Yep. And so, yeah, so I guess that takes us to, to the next slide, which is the main beef that I think we're trying to communicate today as it relates to Ben and Charlie, which we'll talk about in a second. Do you guys want me, do you want me to speak to the slide?

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:21] Okay, so whether it's Dean Bird or Dave Matheson, who has since come out, think about this. Dave Matheson led decades of workshops and retreats telling Mormon men and women that they can change their sexuality if they're gay or lesbian. Claiming that he was in a successful mixed orientation marriage only a few years ago to come out as gay, leave his wife and tell everybody that he, he meant well, he was sincere when he was doing it. He's sure that some people got helped along the way, but all in all, pretty much none. He never really witnessed any meaningful change in sexual orientation, in spite of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars that were collected by Ty Mansfield, by Dave Matheson, by others in the Journey into Manhood project.

John Dehlin [01:45:13] Josh and Lally Weed have come out. Josh came out as gay. He, he and Lolly got divorced, and now Josh is living as a gay man. You know, and they're still friends. But. But the point is, is that how many times, how many times is the Mormon Church going to lift up a bunch of, you know, gay or lesbian spokespeople as role models, tell all the gay and lesbian church members that these are the people you should follow. Follow the mixed orientation marriage, go to conversion therapy, go to journey into manhood, be celibate, live the, Live the Christian Mormon lifestyle, when in reality, these people were living double lives.

John Dehlin [01:45:57] They were secretly engaged in sexual behaviors, or they were in unhealthy, dysfunctional marriages that ended up collapsing where there's all this collateral damage. The LGBTQ person was damaged, the straight spouses were damaged. Often children got involved. They became part of the collateral damage and never did the church have any accountability. Where the church basically said, we're sorry, we led you into lifestyles that were actually really unhealthy and bankrupt. We were wrong. We're sorry. We apologize.

John Dehlin [01:46:34] We want to make restitution. We won't do this again. We'll stop doing this behavior. We're going to stop teaching damaging lifestyles. But instead, what they do is they just act as if nothing happened. You know, they, Dave and Josh and Lolly and, you know, Jessica and all these other people go on to live normal, healthy, happy lives if they can figure it out. And then the church just resurrects a whole new crop of spokespeople like Ben, like Charlie, who are victims in this. They are victims. Let's be really clear. Systems, not people. Ben and Charlie are victims in a broken system. But the Mormon Church is responsible for not making it right, not engaging in its own restitution and repentance, and then just washing and rinsing and repeating the cycle. Do you guys have anything you want to add to that? Because it really should be you guys ranting and not me.

Gerardo Sumano [01:47:36] I think we. I've said it. I, I. Yeah, I mean, we. We've touched on it already. Okay, Tyler, it's a great summary.

Tyler Perry [01:47:45] I feel like I'm gonna get to a ranting point here soon, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna reserve my rants for later.

Celebrity Gay Spokespeople and Church Messaging

John Dehlin [01:47:52] Okay, well, that brings us to. I'll just say that I was really surprised to read in the comments leading up to this episode that even Kendall Wilcox, who for a long, long time has been trying to navigate this middle road of staying faithful, but also advocating for LGBTQ people, even he says, you know, he writes, I mean, the, the Deseret book, published in quite desperation over a decade ago.

John Dehlin [01:48:18] Righteous celibacy. Has been celebrated for quite a while now. And he says now the new highest virtue a queer Mormon can attain is no longer celibacy or a mixed orientation marriage, but for a queer woman to marry a queer man, now that's the ultimate role model. They're both, quote, equally yoked.

John Dehlin [01:48:38] I think this is kind of dark humor. He goes on to write, the individual who's the key liaison to the priesthood executive committee and her husband, who is the president of northstar, are in this type of marriage. And I've been told by more than one celebrity gay, as Kendall Wilcox calls these gay Mormon spokespeople, that they feel pressure to not just settle for celibacy or a mixed orientation marriage. And that celebrity term I think people are going to maybe take umbrage at. But it just shows where even Kendall Wilcox now is in terms of his frustration and sadness with the state of the LGBTQ Mormon community.

John Dehlin [01:49:18] And so with that, we now turn to Charlie Bird and Ben, who are the latest versions of the LGBTQ gay Mormon spokespeople, or the celebrity gays as, as Kevin would refer. So. So Gerardo, do you want to speak to Ben and Charlie? Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:39] So Ben and Charlie, they're both at byu, but from what I understand, Charlie is currently a student, a graduate student at or or he's doing a master's degree, I think. Byu, Ben, and he's openly gay, identifies as gay, but presents himself as a celibate person, you know, like a faithful member of the church who's fully believing and tries to navigate this path of like, like you said, like staying kind of like what I think Kendall tried to do at some point of staying faithful, but advocating at the same time for more inclusion of the LGBTQ community in the church and in their families. And Ben Shilotti is kind of like a, a similar story, but then he works in the honor code office of, of BYU as an honor code administrator.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:36] And both of them had books that are currently selling a desert book in the last, I think, year that they were published. And it's just a very interesting evolution from where we were at of what the kind of spokesperson, the people that, or spokespeople that the church used to embrace and hold up to, to, to the members, they're, they're quite different because now they're using the LGBTQ labels. They, like I said, they, they don't really, like, they don't really use the term same sex attraction.

Tyler Perry [01:51:13] Like you.

Gerardo Sumano [01:51:14] It used, it used to be used before by most public figures, people in the church, and now They're. They're identifying again as gay. And. And they're. They both have a podcast called Questions from the Closet, where they try to just talk about difficult topics regarding LGBTQ issues and the church.

Tyler Perry [01:51:40] And there are some of those episodes that are absolutely fantastic as well. To. To their credit, they do at times really tackle these issues in some really meaningful ways. But on the whole, it's problematic because at the end of the day, once you get to the end of the podcast, you walk away thinking, this is how I'm supposed to conform with what the Church is saying, even though you've just laid out all of these problems with it, and there's not an exploration, really, of how to resolve those issues. It's just, well, these are the challenges that we've got, and. And we kind of have to deal with it, and let's, you know, endure it together.

Tyler Perry [01:52:24] We all get it, but we just have to knuckle under and go. And that's a problem because it's conforming to a bad system, and it does show their victimhood in it because they're not thinking. Rather, they're conforming their thoughts and they're conforming their beliefs to the institution and to the system. System that defines for them what their views and what their attitudes should be, rather than for them discovering truth themselves.

Gerardo Sumano [01:52:54] Yeah, someone is asking if they were partners. No, they're not. Sorry, I just wanted to clarify that.

Tyler Perry [01:53:00] I do ship them, though. I do. I am able to shipper, but,

John Dehlin [01:53:08] I mean, I think the biggest problem is they're basically a new crop, a new generation of apologists who, yes, there's a tiny bit of progress because they self identify as gay, but they are propping up a bankrupt set of theologies and doctrines and policies that continue to harm and damage LGBTQ Mormons. So it's probably difficult because on the one hand, we want to celebrate the progress, right? That they're trying to make a difference, that they're trying to help people, that at least they can self identify as gay, they're trying to work within the system, but it's still a bankrupt, broken system that's damaging people.

John Dehlin [01:53:52] And then if you combine with that, you know, the questions of, are they. Are they really living celibate lives? If so, that's damaging. But then are they dating? Do they have some type of special arrangement with their bishops? Or are they living double lives where they're actually in sexual or semisexual relationships with other men? If they are, then that's hypocritical because there's tons of other gay and lesbian Mormons that are experiencing church discipline and or excommunication for then the behaviors that Ben and Charlie are engaging in privately. So either way, they're either propping up celibacy, which is damaging and harmful and leads to suicidal ideation and, or massive mental health problems, or they're living hypocritical lives, which then is, is, is is setting all sorts of people up for sadness and misery while they're sort of trying to have their cake and eat it too.

John Dehlin [01:54:49] And then they just fall into the long, the long history of public hypocrisy that that leads to the collateral damage. Now, do I have that wrong?

Tyler Perry [01:54:59] No, you're right. On with that, John. They. I will say that from some things that Charlie has mentioned in a couple of podcasts, it does appear that he has some arrangement with his bishop that allows him to date men so long as it does not become sexual. That heirs. I don't know that he's come out and said those words exactly, but there is some very, very heavy subtext and a couple of podcasts that appear to indicate as much. Sorry, go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:40] Yeah, so several sources that are close to to Charlie have confirmed at least to me and I know this will sound as gossip and I, I hate that but I think it's important because it, I, I think, well, at least for me, I'm pretty confident that, that Charlie is either in a committed relationship or, and or dating men. People of their same sex. His same sex.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:09] So like Tyler was saying, he kind of maybe hints on that in some podcasts and he doesn't go as far as to say like I am 100 celibate. I actually think they have a podcast where like he talks about not liking the term celibacy as much.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:31] But, but the image that they present and when parents find their books on, on Desert Book, they don't like they're. They, they the, the parents or the LGBT people that are reading their books that are hearing their stories that all of them, they have no idea that, that for example, maybe Charlie is dating a man or he's like having a, a relationship with people of his same sex. So like John said, they're perpetrating this idea of the church of like faithfulness of the church staying completely chased and out of homosex any kind of homosexual behavior when in real the reality is different.

Tyler Perry [01:57:15] And I think Gerardo and I have consumed more of questions from the closet than most LDS parents are going to consume before they try to use this to persuade their LGBT children to conform to the church's standards. And that just weaponizes it in a really negative way, because, like I said, there is good stuff on there. There is good content. And I don't want to say that this is all bad, that it's all negative. There is good that's in there, but that doesn't mean that the net benefit from it outweighs the net cost. And I think that this just serves to uphold a broken system that's causing more problems than anything else.

Tyler Perry [01:57:56] And we'll see that when we look at really what's happened in the last couple of years. One thing that I do want to give Ben credit for is when BYU had its change in the honor code policy last year. And then there was the whiplash that the LGBT students experienced with, you know, expecting that they were now allowed to date so long as the relationship was chaste, but that they would be able to date according to their orientation.

Tyler Perry [01:58:33] Then they got the whiplash on. No, that's not what we said. And that whole thing, which I have strong feelings about, Ben really did step up in a way where he was personally hurt by the whole thing because of his position.

Tyler Perry [01:58:48] But for a lot of students, and a couple students that I know personally did talk to him and did get good counsel from him on how to navigate that, how to proceed forward in surviving byu. So credit where credit is due. They are trying. They are good. They have good hearts.

Tyler Perry [01:59:12] I think that we would be dishonest if we were to indicate otherwise. These are people who are trying, but they are in a bad system. And that the hope here is that in this conversation, maybe we can start coming up with some ways that these people who are the spokespeople of a bad system can maybe push back on the system and help us become better.

Gerardo Sumano [01:59:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:35] And we're going to receive grief for even talking about or speculating on Ben and Charlie's dating status. And all I can say to that is, I hope we've made the point that when you put yourself in. If you're Josh Weed, if you're Dave Matheson, if you put yourself in the public eye as a spokesperson for the church, you are automatically then putting yourself as the role model for other young gay and lesbian or bisexual members.

John Dehlin [02:00:09] As if you are saying, we're doing it, we're making it work, you can, too. And the minute that you do that, if you are also leading a hypocritical life and leading people into a path that you're not living yourself, that is not working for you. Yourself, then you are deceiving and misleading people. And that is the. We are not here to gossip. We are not here to speculate. We're not even here to criticize Ben and Charlie. We are to call out decades of a system, of a bankrupt system that begins with the bankruptcy theology and sets of doctrines and policies that's been harming people, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, for way too long.

John Dehlin [02:00:53] We begin with that bankrupt system, and then we just say it is time for the recycling of these LGBTQ celebrities and spokespeople to stop and we have to fix the problem, not just keep repeating the problem. And what we're saying is, is Ben and Charlie, if you are living hypocritical lives, then you are harming people, even though you're trying to do good. Or if you're encouraging more celibacy and mixed orientation marriages, you're also harming people. And that's all we're trying to say.

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:27] And one of the arguments that I've heard, and I think. Well, one of the arguments that I've heard that are very strong regarding this is like having. That I really believe in is like having people like Charlie or Ben at byu. It's really holding off progress that come. That could come directly from the church because the brethren can see Ben and Ben and Charlie as like, look, we have this. This honor code administrator who is willing to enforce the rules at byu, so it can't be that bad. You know, so it can't. It can be done. And in my opinion, just as. Just. Just as like, it's important to highlight the good that they're doing. I think it's. It's a little more complicated than that because in some way, they are also, in my opinion, holding off progress that the church may make.

John Dehlin [02:02:31] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [02:02:31] And I thoroughly agree with that, that they are providing top cover that allows the church. The church is addicted to traumatizing LGBTQ people. And Ben and Charlie, other LGBTQ apologist or spokespeople, they're the enablers that allow that to happen. And that pattern needs to stop. It's time for an intervention.

John Dehlin [02:02:53] Yeah. As long as they can, sort of. As long as LGBTQ spokespeople keep saying all is well in Zion, the church never has to actually fix the problem. And that's what we're trying to say.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:05] I think.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:05] Okay, if you go to the next slide, this is just an example, John, of how Charlie and. Well, let's just talk about. Specifically about Charlie, because it's his book, how he deals with the difficult topic of bigotry in the church regarding LGBT issues. There's this document that, that, that, that it's out there on the Internet compiled by our dear friend Kyle Ashworth that just highlights the, all the rhetoric that the church has had, all the, all this stuff that the church has said regarding LGBT issues from its founding up until now. And it's just a progress. It's, it's, it's pretty shocking to just read how the church used to deal with this issue back just like a few years ago and let alone like decades ago in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and chart one of I think Charlie's frustrations, and I've heard this from some of his podcasts, is that he feels like he has talked about this.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:17] He feels like he has covered the, the church's bigotry and the church's bad rhetoric regarding LGBT issues. But I think it would be important to analyze how he, he deals with it and how he covers it because in my opinion is not the way he does it is not very helpful and it's not really triggering any change from the church and causing some, maybe even like some spiritual trauma and self indoctrination. So if you go back to the slide where like it's, yeah, there in his book on chapter nine, he talks about reading a document. I don't know if it was this document that you just showed on the screen on the record or a different document, but he talks about a similar document that he had on his phone and he was talking to a friend about it and he was, and Charlie was pretty sad and mad about how the church was talking about LGBT issues in the past.

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:26] And the whole chapter, he's addressing this. But the whole chapter's premise is to, to show how the friend helped Charlie say look, you don't really have to look at that stuff. Just focus on Jesus, everything's gonna be fine. And Charlie create gives this recipe or, or these points and to how to deal with it. And one of, one of the, the first one is to acknowledge there was pain, but don't let it become into bitterness or hate. And he's just make sure there's no more negative negativity in you praise for those who might ignorantly hurt you. Try to be more patient and forgiving. Instead of reading old quotes, read uplifting material.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:12] And he, in the chapter he talks about how he deleted the document from his phone. And like that was super freeing because he didn't have to deal with that anymore. And, and then finally pray to know that the prophet and apostles are car cult of God, which is like just awful self indoctrination in my personal opinion and not helpful at all. Not being able to deal with the past in a critical way and analyze and ask the tough questions. You know, if the church was like for example, like if the church was teaching that in the past, what else could they be wrong about? Why do we have to accept what they're telling us today?

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:52] If today I agree that what, that what they're saying back then was awful and wrong. So let's just suspend any critical thinking, delete this, this old quotes, let's stop paying attention to them and then just pray to know if this prophets are, are truly called of God. And this is the way that I've seen Charlie and Ben deal with this issue. So they have several episodes where, where they deal with like this awful way that the church talks and keeps talking about LGBT issues. And like Tyler had said, the, the main, the, the conclusion, they always end up this note of like, let's just focus on Jesus.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:37] Let's just like kind of like ignore what was said and keep moving forward without any real critical thinking, analyzing what was said or asking tough questions.

Tyler Perry [02:07:50] And that pattern follows as well with last month's Jeffrey Holland talk when the episode that they did the day after, exact same pattern. You see that, I think from the subtext there, Ben was the one that was dealing with all of that that time around. And Charlie stepped up and showed Ben how to follow this particular recipe and ensure that he was back to being indoctrinated into conforming in line with the system.

Tyler Perry [02:08:23] Looking at this list, I have to wonder what somebody who studies epistemology or the way that we know how things are true, somebody like Anthony Mankavasco, would address this sort of thing like, this is a recipe for breeding confirmation bias, for coming to believe anything that you want to believe, whether or not it's true, whether or not it's valuable, whether or not it actually betters humanity. You could convince yourself of anything following this recipe.

Tyler Perry [02:08:57] It's useless for discovering truth. It's useless for advancing good dialogue. It's useless for having, as Gerardo mentioned, good critical thinking. And it's destructive. If there's one foundational pattern that the church uses to destroy our ability as members who are indoctrinated in the system of our ability to process real world information and to use it in meaningful ways and to make the world a better place, this is it. Because then we just wind up toeing the line based off of anything that we're taught. We're Ezekiel, who talks about being blown to and throw by whichever wind would distract them.

Tyler Perry [02:09:42] Like, that's what this creates. That is exactly what this creates. If you have good critical thinking skills, if you are able to actually process information and deal with negative emotions, then you can actually push the envelope forward. You can actually make things better because you recognize what the problems are. And all this does is stunt our growth. It keeps us from being able to progress forward. And Charlie has set up a bad pattern here, but it's a pattern that the Church sets up.

Tyler Perry [02:10:12] It's exactly from the hand. Like, you could pull this out from the handbook. You could pull this out from the Book of Mormon. This is basically Moroni's promise all over again. Hope that it's true, want it to be true, have faith that it's true. Now pray that it's true, and the Holy Ghost will tell you that it's true. It's unfalsifiable. You can't actually arrive at truth that way.

John Dehlin [02:10:32] And there's one thing that Charlie and Ben have in common, which is they're young. Like, yeah, you can do this. You can white knuckle it, you know, in your 20s and mid 20s or late 20s or maybe even early 30s. But the outcome from the research I did is that it's not sustainable. You can't go. You either can't go your whole life without emotional and sexual intimacy, or you do at your own psychological peril. So part of the recycling, what. What Ben and Charlie don't understand is they're fresh meat. They are literally young and naive. And so they're white knuckling this lifestyle. They're either living the hypocritical lifestyle, or they're white knuckling it. Either way, they're young, fresh meat being used by the Church as part of this recycling of public LGBTQ spokespeople, but the life that they're advocating is not sustainable. And that's how they're victims, in my view.

Gerardo Sumano [02:11:38] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [02:11:39] And I. I, for one, really want to see Charlie and Ben escape from this system, but I want to see them do it in a way that works for them. They seem to want to be staying faithful in the church, and if that's going to be the case, then maybe there's a way of doing it, maybe there's a way of advancing that envelope. But they have to stop with this pattern that's critical. This pattern has to stop.

John Dehlin [02:12:01] And it's one thing that they are living the pattern. And if that were just their personal choice. Let them have their personal choice. The minute that they're public spokespeople, then they're encouraging other people to follow the pattern.

Tyler Perry [02:12:14] Yeah, absolutely.

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:12:16] Gerardo, do you want to say anything about this?

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:19] Yeah. So this slide, just super quick. I don't think I want to take too much time on this, but this just is another example of how many this Apollo. I know, Charlie and Ben, I think they've said in the past they take offense when people call them apologists because they don't want to be seen as that. But in reality, like Tyler has said before, there's. In reality, that's kind of what they're doing. They're apologizing for the church and showing ways into how to stop critical thinking and just keep moving forward with whatever you want to hold on to that the church is giving you.

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:59] So I think another maybe damaging thing that they do, and this is exemplified by this post that Charlie did, ironically, a couple weeks before Elder Holland went and gave his horrible speech at byu, is this post that Charlie Bird did, just talking about how beautiful and amazing it was that the church has moved into this amazing space where they now support LGBTQ issues. And he, like, just. I'm just gonna read this one sentence that he wrote on the post. And he fought. He. With. Sorry. With this post. He also posted a series of quotes of LDS leaders regarding LGBT issues, supposedly.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:51] And then. So I'm just gonna read this one sentence. He says, I feel grateful to belong to a church that focuses on building Zion and promoting Christlike love for all. And he's obviously talking about LGBTQIA people. So it's like completely denying the harmful messaging that the church gives. And I, again, I like, I said ironically just weeks before Elder Holland's talk.

Gerardo Sumano [02:14:16] And all these quotes were. Some of them were taken out of context. Some of them that. That were, like, not even talking about LGBTQ issues. Mo. Like, I think there was two or three that were. Was Russell Talk talking about racism and not LGBT people. And so he just grabbed this series of quotes and made them look like this is. Look. This is amazing. This is what the church is now saying about LGBTQ inclusion.

Gerardo Sumano [02:14:44] If you go to the next slide, I just want to show this one. This one quote that he. That. That he posted. The. The one on the left is the. The quote from Russell M. Baller and Ballard that he. That he posted. And it's just Russell and Ballard saying like, that people from different sexual orientations, like gay and lesbian, they. They. They have a place in the kingdom. And this is something that Charlie and. And Ben tried to talk about a lot, that people from lgbt, people that consider themselves lgbt, have a place in the church. But really you have. Any person, any critical thinker has to really go ahead and compare that to what else has the church said or how really the brethren and the actual church interprets this, and not just post a single quote, maybe even taken out of context in some of them, and just try to paint the picture of the church being this amazing place for LGBT people.

John Dehlin [02:15:51] Yeah, because you can't. You can't date who you love, you can't marry who you love. There's no theology in the afterlife for you reaching your exaltation other than, you know, you being fixed because you're broken and bad, which makes you want to die early so that you can get there to become fixed. And all you can do is live a drab, meaningful, wretched, lonely, sad life for as long as you're in this life, because the plan of salvation isn't for you. We know that celibacy is sad. We know that mixed orientation marriages fail. So what is the life that the church wants for the LGBTQ Mormon? So to quote, go ahead, sorry, if

Tyler Perry [02:16:40] there is a place for me, where is it?

John Dehlin [02:16:42] Yeah, where is it?

Tyler Perry [02:16:46] Since I got into this sphere of actually critically analyzing the church, and especially on this particular genre of issues, that's the question that I've come to. And there's no answer. And every answer that they give, the only way I can characterize it is a sounding brass, tinkling cymbal. It's without charity, it's meaningless noise. There's no value to it. That's where we're at. Because we are stuck in this backwards and narrow theology that has no place to move because we keep trying to be like the evangelicals. And Charlie and Ben are supporting this, and the other spokespeople are supporting this. They're. They're allowing it to. To be upheld. It's not sustainable. It is going to fall apart at some point in time. It's a house of cards.

Gerardo Sumano [02:17:36] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:17:37] Someone is pointing out that. And it's kind of true that Ben and Charlie are also. I mean, we. We have to acknowledge that they're trying to make change in the T. In the true believing member community and a very orthodox Mormons. And the only way really to get to those people is to present yourself. And I'm not saying they're not, but. But really, you have to present yourself in a very faithful way. Not much critical, not much criticism. Of the brethren and. And kind of like navigate this space in a very careful way, which is, I think they've acknowledged in the past that's kind of what they're trying to do. But it comes with some, like, we've talked about some damage and collateral damage as well that I think not a lot of people are addressing, and I think that's why we're doing this presentation.

Demographics and Rhetoric Around LGBTQ Mormons

Tyler Perry [02:18:33] And what was the religion news statistic? We didn't actually pick that up, but it's 23. As much as 23% of Gen Z Mormons identify as not straight, with 20% identifying actually somewhere on the LGBTQIA spectrum. That's significant. For anybody doing the math out there, if you have five priests in your ward, that means one of them is gay. I mean, for your primary, if you have 20 kids in there, then four of them are gay, are LGBT. Somewhere on that spectrum, like, this is a significant portion of the church. And that's who we're kicking. That's who we're kicking to the curb right now.

Gerardo Sumano [02:19:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:21] All right, so what's this slide about? The satanic piracy of the LGBTQ agenda. What's that?

Tyler Perry [02:19:27] I'm really proud of this title. So this is kind of leaning into Tad Callister's or Callister's comments back in May, just before Pride Month. I'm sure that that wasn't conveniently timed at all as well as Jeffrey Holland's comments at byu. So we'll see here on the quote on the left, that tag Callister describes opposition to the Family Proclamation. So Satan's plan. Right. So his Satan's plan is in direct opposition to the Family Proclamation, which is a legal document, not doctrinal in any way. It is an insidious attempt to destroy the nuclear family and God's moral values. He disguises his plan of attack with alluring labels such as love and compassion for endorsement of same sex marriage.

Tyler Perry [02:20:17] Each of these proposals, however, constitutes a total. Constitutes a frontal attack on the family unit and its survival. So there are other proposals in there. This was the one that was relevant to our context. So love and compassion for endorsement of same sex marriage is apparently part of Satan's plan. It is a satanic plot to destroy the family.

Tyler Perry [02:20:39] That's what Tad Callister is saying here. I don't know how else to read that. I have talked with believers, with orthodox believers on this, and they were unable to present another interpretation of this that made any sort of sense.

Tyler Perry [02:20:54] And because that's what he's saying, he is saying that supporting same Sex marriage is part of a satanic plot. So where does the piracy kind of come in here? Well, Jeffrey Holland said, if a student commandeers a graduation podium intends to represent everyone getting deploy diplomas.

Tyler Perry [02:21:12] So this is talking about Matt Easton to announce his personal sexual orientation. What might another speaker feel free to announce the next year until anything goes? This is gross. I have nothing, no other way of characterizing this, really. Jeffrey Holland either lied about this or willfully mischaracterized it. It's one of the two. They didn't have all the facts in front of him and thus. And was just willfully mischaracterizing what Matt Easton did.

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:41] Or.

Tyler Perry [02:21:41] Or he did have the facts in front of him, which he indicates in the talk that he did, and he chose to lie about how Matt Easton went through this. I listened to Matt Easton's Mormon story interview on this subject, and that made this. Even condemned Holland's remarks here even more so, describing what he did as commandeering, as basically pirating the graduation podium to announce his personal sexual orientation. When he says that he was proud to be a gay son of God. I mean, come on. It's ridiculous that that's a big issue. It's. And so we have these two comments that are showing up recently. This is this year, within three months of each other.

Gerardo Sumano [02:22:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:31] Right.

Tyler Perry [02:22:32] Right. And so this is. Charlie and Ben know about this. This is right in front of them. Other spokespeople for the church. They know about this, and this is the system that they are allowing to be perpetuated. And what the church is doing is they are taking a shovel and they are digging a hole, and they're digging themselves deeper and deeper and what amounts to a pointless war against the LGBTQ community. There's no reason for this. There is no reason at all for the church to be doing this, except for the idea that they want to be like the evangelical. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:23:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:06] And again, we're not. We're. We're talking about systems, not people here. But. But this goes back to the point you made about PTSD and LGBTQ Mormons. Mixed messages was one of, you know, the points that was made. And Ben and Charlie are complicit in the conveyance of mixed messages, because they're basically telling LGBTQ Mormons and their family members and allies, hey, the church loves gay and lesbian people. There's a place for them. You're welcome here. And. And while they're saying that, you know, Quentin Quinton Cook and Elder Holland or Tad Callister or, you know, whoever are still regularly communicating these damaging messages. Not to mention packers saying, why would a loving heavenly Father make someone gay?

John Dehlin [02:23:59] Or Elder Bednar famously saying that there are no gay or lesbian members of the church, like the Brethren know better, but they continue to say super homophobic and harmful things. They've never stopped doing it. They will continue to do it because they have to placate the conservative right.

John Dehlin [02:24:16] And so what Charlie and Ben and others are doing is they're being complicit in chaining LGBTQ members that otherwise would go find a healthy, happy life and identity. They're complicit in chaining them to the church so that they can continue to experience those damaging messages and the trauma that her art or you began this episode referring to. And that's why Ben and Charlie and other LGBTQ Mormon apologists are complicit in the harm.

Gerardo Sumano [02:24:49] Even.

John Dehlin [02:24:50] Even if they, in their minds or even in reality, feel like they're doing some good, they're still complicit in the harm.

Gerardo Sumano [02:24:58] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [02:24:58] And hopefully we're helping them to know better now, so that way they can do better.

Gerardo Sumano [02:25:02] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Apologists on Both Sides of the Debate

John Dehlin [02:25:06] So, Gerardo, you asked me to introduce a final bit of my research really quick. I just want to speak to, you know, part of Charlie's. You know, part of Charlie's approach is to cling to Jesus, to cling to the Savior. And I just want to say that, you know, there are. There are other LGBTQ Mormon apologists that say the same thing. It's all about Jesus. It's all about the Savior. It's all about, you know, following Jesus, following Christ, believing in Christ, loving Christ. And that sounds good. Who's going to argue with Jesus and love and Christ?

John Dehlin [02:25:46] But the problem is that there are different forms of conversion or reparative therapy that don't involve electroshock therapy or slapping your wrist with a rubber band or going to a psychologist. And what we showed in our study that we published with the Journal of Counseling Psychology, again, is that the most common form of attempts to change one's sexual orientation was personal righteousness. And what that really is defined as is clinging to the Savior, praying to Jesus. This is what Ty Mansfield was encouraging in his Voices of Hope message as well.

John Dehlin [02:26:28] The number one way that Mormons tried to change their sexual orientation or cope with their sexual orientation or manage their desires to be with someone of the same sex or to find a committed, loving partner where they could engage in true emotional or sexual intimacy, the way that they tried to beat back those natural and healthy urges was through personal righteousness. And what we found is that it wasn't psychotherapy that was the most damaging form of managing your urges and beating back your natural identity. The most damaging and the most prevalent forms of trying to manage your sexuality was through either church counseling with your bishop or through personal righteousness.

John Dehlin [02:27:25] Well, you know, they were, they were the most damaging and the most prevalent approaches used. For the longest durations, we would find anywhere between 30 and 40%, 45% of the participants reporting harm. From the very techniques that Charlie and Ben are recommending. This idea of cling to the Savior, the Savior will bless you, have faith, the Savior will heal you. Those are damaging messages that are harmful and bankrupt in the long run. So it sounds good to say cling to Jesus. It sounds good to say have faith in the Savior, but it will harm you for longer amounts of time with higher levels of severity.

John Dehlin [02:28:14] And it, it is just as bad, if not more bad than the recommendations to go to a psychologist or a support group to engage in conversion therapy. And that's what we're not talking about. We refuse to talk about the fact that clinging to Jesus is probably the most damaging recommendation of all because Jesus won't take away your same sex attraction. Jesus won't fix you. Jesus won't make celibacy any better. Jesus won't make your mixed orientation marriage work. Jesus won't make you want to not die. You are going to want to die or you are going to experience severe depression and anxiety by putting your faith in Jesus. And that's why we've got to stop recommending Jesus as the solution to being gay or lesbian and Mormon.

Tyler Perry [02:29:09] Jesus hung out with 12 other dudes all the time and they would hug and kiss him and put their heads on his breast. I'm just saying.

John Dehlin [02:29:16] Yeah,

Gerardo Sumano [02:29:20] I, I do want to say, but yeah, just really quick. I, I know we said at the beginning that we were gonna talk about the, just some solutions and be. We're gonna explore it a little bit in depth, hopefully not taking too much more time because this has already been two and a half hour episode. But I do want to say that something helpful that these people apologists can be doing is, is mentioning the research.

Gerardo Sumano [02:29:51] I, My husband has an uncle who has a brother who's gay and he is a professor at a university on sociology and he counsels a lot of LGBT Mormons. He's, he, he, I think he'll, he's still a member of the church and he's married to a same sex partner.

Gerardo Sumano [02:30:13] But one of the first things he does when he meets new LGBT people to help him is show them the research. He shows them like, look, this is what the outcomes of celibacy are. This is what the outcomes of same sex marriage are. On average, this. And he said, he, he says that he shows your research. I think he said, he mentioned that on a podcast. I think on Jill has a road human, human stories just recently. And he shows them like, this is the outcomes of trying to say, trying to cling to Jesus and try to change your sexual orientation.

Gerardo Sumano [02:30:46] Make a decision, what's going to be best for you. And these are the kind of like hard questions that people like you don't have to criticize the church and the brethren to be to acknowledge that there's research out there, that there's science behind this that can really tell us what the outcome of these decisions can be. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:10] And to that point, to date, people like Ty Mansfield and Josh Weed and others, I think one of the reasons why the church excommunicated me, frankly, was to invalidate the research. So to date, a lot of these LGBTQ apologists, even though the psychological communities embraced our research, they tend to either downplay it, invalidate it, or just frankly ignore it. And part of that's by the church's design. They don't want people looking at the data because the data contradicts what the prophet seers and revelators have been teaching and recommending for decades.

Tyler Perry [02:31:48] Right. Certain group of apologists to spend a whole podcast of one of their episodes going after that exact point after the Holland talk, just to kind of mention with that slide, the previous slide. So we have up here people who would not want to be classified as apologists. And those are ones, the books on the right hand side. I would actually recommend reading those if you're interested in this intersection. These are people who actually, for listeners,

John Dehlin [02:32:17] what the books are.

Tyler Perry [02:32:18] So those books are Queer Mormon Theology by Blair Ostler and Gay Latter Day St. Crossroads by. By Evan Smith. The latter book is available for free or you can get a copy of it through Amazon. I think Gay LDS Crossroads is the website.

Tyler Perry [02:32:33] I can look that or give it to you later. We can add that into the show notes. So both of those writers really push back and they do it based off of the data that's available. But they're also faithful in the way that they present their views on the subject.

Tyler Perry [02:32:53] Charlie in his book said that he wanted his book to be the book that he wished he had had when he was 14. Evan Smith's book is the book that I wish I had had when I was 14. That book is fantastic. It's a wonderful read for this intersection. I highly recommend going through it because these are people who are actually pushing back the books on the left. These are ones that are more capitulating to those views to capitulating to the views of the church and that are just allowing that top cover to continue. So we should be modeling our responses to the church based off the way that the people on the right are responding and starting to kind of push away from the way that's modeled on the left side.

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:31] And I do want to mention. I see for those.

John Dehlin [02:33:34] Wait. Sorry, Gerardo. For those who are listening and not viewing, the books on the left are in Quiet Desperation, which is by Ty Mansfield. Listen, Learn and Love by Richard Osler. A Walk in My Shoes by Ben Schlatti. And now this is a, you know, Tom Christofferson's a dear friend of mine. You guys listed that we may be won by Tom Kristofferson on that list. And you know, I just want to say I have to recuse myself from this part of the conversation. Is a personal friend who I love. Do you want to explain why you

Tyler Perry [02:34:11] included that book with all love and deference to Tom Kristofferson, who in other settings has stood up for the community in meaningful ways. There's also the fact that he is Todd Kristofferson's brother. And I think that that places an even heavier mantle on him to actually be more willing to push the envelope publicly. And he's done that. But that's not always the case. And that maybe one is one of those books that well meaning, well intentioned LDS parents use as a look at what Tom Kristofferson is doing. He's a brother of an apostle, he's gay. He's making it work despite all the things that he's been through. That's one of those books that accomplishes that despite Tom's best efforts to avoid that.

Gerardo Sumano [02:35:05] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [02:35:06] And I think that that needs to be accounted for in this conversation. And that's why that's on that side was the hardest one to put on that side.

Gerardo Sumano [02:35:15] And yeah. And anecdote just like as a personal experience when my husband came out to his mom and told him, told her that that he was thinking of maybe pursuing a same sex relationship. His mom immediately cling to Tom Christofferson's book without reading it and telling her, telling him, hey, look, Tom Christofferson divorced his same sex partner and, and it's back in the church. You should go read It So like Tyler said, I know Tom has acknowledged that this is completely the opposite of what he intended to do with this book.

Gerardo Sumano [02:35:55] I love the interview he did with you on Mormon Stories where he said if, if, if a parent comes and do that to, does that to you. Go and highlight all the parts where I say that parents should support their kids no matter what and, and give it back to your parents.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:14] But not everyone goes and listens to your, to your, to your interview with him. Right. So it, that doesn't take away the, the real, the real thing that is happening with, with that book sometimes. But yeah, like Tyler, I also want to acknowledge that Tom might be,

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:38] I

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:38] don't know, in my opinion, I hate to classify people, but I, I, I see Tom as a, more, more open to critical thinking, asking tough questions. In his recent interview with Faith Matters and that interview he did about Elder Holland's dog with Patrick Mason, he really asked tough questions and, and starts getting members to really think about, for example, how the church dealt with black issues in the past and, and, and, and the priesthood and, and the, the, the priesthood band before, how that might be res, like might be just happening the same thing right now. We just don't have the same lighting anyway. But so yeah, but the reason why he's there is because of that.

Tyler Perry [02:37:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:25] My, my two cents about Tom and I, I know him very well. He's been a really important part of my family. He's been there for me and my family in some really dark times. I, My sense for him is he is a sincere true believer, especially in, in God and in Jesus. His, his Christian beliefs are real and sincere and he lives them in ways I, I've never seen in another human in many ways. And he, he is a literal believer in the historicity of the church and of the Book of Mormon. And so, so his story is unique because he, he.

John Dehlin [02:38:07] Sorry, I just had a power surge, a power failure for just a second. He, Tom, Tom. When he was excommunicated, he, as I understand it, he asked to be excommunicated because he knew he wasn't living the gospel. And when he came back to the church and did leave his partner, it was because he sincerely missed and loved the temple and wanted to come back in full fellowship. And what I love about Tom and I need to fix my, my camera as I do this. Just one second.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:44] Sorry.

Tyler Perry [02:38:50] Love the technical issues.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:52] You're muted. You're muted, John. You're muted on the screen.

John Dehlin [02:39:03] Sorry about that. We just had a power failure in the studio. Everyone What I love about Tom most is that. Is that he. He is not telling people he supports gay and lesbian identities and transgender identities. He is. Is not telling people like you say, Gerardo, to follow his example. He is completely affirming of people being who they are, being authentic, doing that individual journey.

John Dehlin [02:39:31] And I think he's doing some of the hardest work of all, which is he is constantly on the inside, giving feedback to the people that have the power and the matter most and helping to make those changes from within, which is a very hard place to be.

John Dehlin [02:39:52] So that's tough. But he also does encourage a reliance on the Savior and. But. But for him, the Savior tells him to be authentic, that. That he wasn't fully living according to the Savior's will for him until he was living as an out, open gay man.

Gerardo Sumano [02:40:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:12] So, anyway, it's complicated, but I love Tom. I. And when I listened to his interview with Patrick Mason and the. That recent podcast, Faith Matters, or whatever it's called, Faith Again, I thought it was profound how courageous he was to. In a delicate, sensitive, but respectful way, diplomatic way, to say how disappointed he was in Elder Holland and in the church's latest stances. So, Tom, I just have to say Tom has my utmost respect, and I'm glad you guys are able to share your concerns as well. I think we need to be able to do both.

Tyler Perry [02:40:50] That's why I really hope that. Sorry. I really hope that highlights the nuance here, actually, that when we're talking about this, like, Tom Kristofferson is a fantastic human being, and our demarcation that way is not to disparage his character, nor is it to disparage the character of the other people on that side. Our hope is that as we advance this dialogue forward, that these things that wind up being well intentioned and intended for good purposes, that are being weaponized for harm, will start moving in a better direction. That's the hope. And I think that Tom Christofferson embodies that better than anybody else on that side of the line.

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:32] And I'll be. I think he would like to see the church make major changes. I just think he. He believes that it's. It's. God's. It's God's. God needs to do it. And so he's just waiting for God to make the changes.

Tyler Perry [02:41:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:46] Yeah. And actively working within.

Tyler Perry [02:41:49] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:41:51] Were you going to say something, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:53] No. No. Okay.

Obstacles and Proposed Solutions for LGBTQ Members

Tyler Perry [02:41:55] So moving into this next slide here, we want to talk about the obstacles. As we mentioned at the beginning, that there are significant obstacles and there are a couple that one of these was pointed out in an entire Mormon expression episode by John larson. It's episode 280, why the Church Cannot reform on gay marriage. I really felt that this was highlighted by this quote that what if tomorrow the church said, all right, we're reversing the position on gay. We recognize gay marriage. What would actually happen in that case? And he goes on to talk about how so much of the Church's position on gay marriage is rooted in misogyny.

Tyler Perry [02:42:29] It's rooted in the anti feminist movements that descended down from the Church's opposition to the era, the Equal Rights Amendment. And Petrie in Tabernacles of Clay, in the quote here just below, supports that. So he expresses that the family values framework were expressions of deep concern about the structure of society itself. That for many conservative Christians, going back here to talking about the involvement of the evangelical right in all of this, the image of the woman with equal rights as a feminist and perhaps a lesbian raised the possibility that women might reject their natural and divinely ordained roles in the patriarchal order. These ideas helped delineate the conservative Christian heterosexual relationships as structured by a hierarchy of submission.

Tyler Perry [02:43:15] Many Mormons were deeply committed to the patriarchal order, quite literally because this is in the temple with clearly defined roles and hierarchical structuring of society, church and family. This belief informed LDS leaders political opposition to equal rights for women and for gays and lesbians. So Petrie assigns really the advent of the Church's position on LGBT rights to being equal with the Equal Rights Amendment for women. We see this pattern in the evangelical right. We see this pattern in the Church. These are the patterns of recycling that we've talked about. This is just recycling teachings rather than recycling people.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:58] All right. Okay. So now we have to bring up Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon.

Tyler Perry [02:44:06] Now we have to bring up Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:44:08] Never a bad thing. Never a bad thing.

Tyler Perry [02:44:10] So we titled this like critics to the rescue. And that's because in a way that the apologists are not, the critics are actually trying to present workable solutions. And so in episode 41 of Mormonism Live, Bill Riel and RFM laid out four solutions to what Jeffrey R. Holland referred to as the same sex topic.

Tyler Perry [02:44:34] And the first is to actually define a place for LGBT people. And they suggest what I think most people who deal with this space actually suggest first. And that is, we don't know anything about tiers 2 and 3 of the celestial kingdom. Let's stick the gaze there.

Tyler Perry [02:44:52] It's a Fine. Initial solution. It does have some problems where LGBT people still being considered somewhat second class. But in another episode where they refer to this, Bill Real does suggest turning the tiering from being vertical in nature to being horizontal. So it's 1, 2, 3 across, left to right, not 1, 2, 3, top to bottom.

Tyler Perry [02:45:18] And then that would just be different states of being. The second is that Elohim will sort all this out in the next life. Basically with any other weird family situation that shows up immortality. When it comes to heterosexual unions or anything like that, anything that makes us uncomfortable, all that, we are just willing to let God sort it out. Why can't we just allow gay people to be sealed in the temple and let God sort it out at the end? That's solution number two. Three is to remove the spirit baby's teaching. Basically the idea, one of the common arguments from true believing Mormons is that gay people can't experience eternal progression because they can't continue to have spiritual offspring.

Tyler Perry [02:46:07] But when you look at the King Follett discourse, the idea that spiritual offspring are begat in a way that's anything consistent to the way that children are begotten, immortality is basically shown to be incorrect. Joseph Smith directly contradicts that idea in that discourse. And that's where a lot of the exaltation doctrines really emerge from anyway. And then the final solution that Bill Riehl and Arfan present is called classifying previous teachings as simply policy.

Tyler Perry [02:46:41] Let us claim new light and knowledge and just change direction. So this is just the church just shows up, says, hey, we got new light knowledge from God, we're going this way, we're allowing kids to get married, and this is what God wants now. Everything else was just policy before.

Tyler Perry [02:46:55] This is what they did with race in the priesthood. It's what they did with the polygamy practices. It's a pattern of behavior and the church could follow that same pattern again. There are obvious challenges with that, though. I think that the existence of this podcast shows that there are significant challenges with that approach.

John Dehlin [02:47:19] All right,

Tyler Perry [02:47:23] so I don't like yes, but. So we're going to go with yes, and here. And I have two different arguments that I like to present to believers that I think work within the LDS theology, that work within that current framework, and that actually work to be more inclusive. And the first is what I call the argument from eternal progression. And what this basically goes through is it says that God's progression is based off of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Tyler Perry [02:47:57] That's us. We are his spiritual children. He experiences spiritual progression through us advancing into eternal life. If we are to become like him, that means that we must get to the point at which we experience eternal progression through our own spiritual offspring.

Tyler Perry [02:48:16] And so what the suggestion is here is that if we. If our progression enables Elohim's progression, then if we have children and then they have children, we could experience progression through that step. So if a gay couple were to be sealed, for instance, to a straight child, they could experience eternal progression through their spiritual grandchildren, essentially by their straight children having children, their posterity, their line would continue because they are sealed to a straight child that is able to. To procreate in the same way. So this holds on to the spirit babies doctrine, not necessarily getting rid of that in this particular argument. It allows for that to hold.

Tyler Perry [02:48:57] It also just puts gay people right into the top tier of the social kingdom with the same exaltation as everybody else, with no real challenges to the general theology. It's consistent with adoption doctrines that Joseph Smith presented. Do we want to tackle anything there before we move on to the second argument?

Gerardo Sumano [02:49:17] No, I think I just. I think this is just either a summary and expansion of Blair Ostler's book, Right? Correct.

Tyler Perry [02:49:26] This is inspired by something that. By Blair Ostler's book. Thank you for bringing that up. So Blair Ostler writes about the idea that, like, Mormon theology is as queer in its own, like, way. Like it's already a queer church. That's what we were aiming for. She replaces the word peculiar with queer in order to do that. And it's really a fascinating read. But looking at that, looking at those ideas, this was one of the thoughts that I had. She doesn't actually present this idea per se, but she does build up to it. And I think this is the natural extension off of what she presents in queer Mormon theology.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:03] And just so listeners know, I think this is all. This is just important just to touch on briefly, because if you go back a little, like just on how the priesthood ban was lifted, part of it, there was a lot of different reasons why that happened, but one of them is that people believe.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:29] I think it was his son who said that Spencer W. Kimball was reading ideas from scholars and, and, and just members of the church on how to make the. The priesthood ban work related to the church's theology. So I think that's why it's important to explore it at least a little bit.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:50] If you go back to the slide, John. Yeah, So I think the argument that you just want to make here is that I Mean the technology here in On Earth is advancing so much as to like maybe make lesbians be able to have biological children at some point in the future years. You put there some like NBC articles that talk about this.

Tyler Perry [02:51:13] So that technology technically exists. There's just a lot of ethical and legal issues that kind of stand in the way and there's some things that we need to sort out with it. But the technology itself basically exists

John Dehlin [02:51:25] and

Tyler Perry [02:51:25] it's just really around the corner from implementation for gay men. That technology is a few years away, is much longer away, but it still is in the future. Like it's still something that we can actually reasonably predict will occur. So the argument is if we are going to have that kind of technology in mortality, why wouldn't that technology exist celestially? Why would we be able to do something that can't be done by God? That's weird. That's inconsistent with Mormon theology. Let's bump up the theology to recognize that that's essentially the argument. Blair Ostler does acknowledge that I may have referred to Blair may have misgendered. Blair ostler. I'm not 100% certain what their pronouns are. I know they do identify as queer. So if I did misgender, I do apologize. I. Yeah, somebody wants to is able to correct me. I'd appreciate that.

John Dehlin [02:52:14] My understanding is Blair also identifies as a woman.

Tyler Perry [02:52:19] Is it she pronouns. Okay, good. Then I'm in good shape then. I just want to make sure because I do know that Blair has a queer identity that doesn't fit into any of the, the specific categories.

John Dehlin [02:52:32] I'm not sure though.

Theology, Scripture, and Institutional Reform

Gerardo Sumano [02:52:33] Yeah, okay, so just really quick, if you can go John, to the next slide. This next three slides work. I think we should try to go through them really quick. It's just about how to heal moreness in system of LGBT spiritual trauma by ending the legal legalism, ending the literalism, ending the double messaging. So we just give a few like ways in which the church can do that. As far as legalism is just acknowledging that the PL salvation is universalist. A universalist. We don't understand everything. I mean the church is kind of like going into that direction already with like so many different just hard situations of like divorce and, and women marrying again to other men and sealing to multiple men who were married into who they were married in during their life. So the church today for example allows for deceased women to be.

Tyler Perry [02:53:42] To be

Gerardo Sumano [02:53:45] sealed to multiple men as soon as the man were deceit are deceased. And they kind of like. I mean the reasoning is just like well, God is just gonna sort it out in the next life. So just take out the legalism. Just make excess exaltation as like something that we don't really understand. Something that is not like determined by how much how, how you don't really like, you know, how if you don't drink coffee then you can be exalted kind of thing. So just take that.

Tyler Perry [02:54:17] I think the key here with this is, is really identifying that Mormonism at its core is a universalist church. Joseph Smith presented the plan of salvation as a universalist doctrine. That's. That's what it is at its core. It's not necessarily Unitarian Universalist, but it is universalist in the nature of salvation. Everyone will be saved. Exaltation is just the cherry on top. Like that's really what that's about. But this idea that progression could ever be halted, that there's. It's inconsistent with a just God, that's a whole other can of worms.

Gerardo Sumano [02:54:48] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [02:54:50] But it's something that does go into trying to dismantle legalism. If we could go back to the slide two, talking about literalism.

Gerardo Sumano [02:54:57] Sorry, sorry. Something I want to address too. And the church is kind of doing a lot of this in other, in other contexts. For example, the, the doctrine of like, oh, only if you do these things, you're going to be exalted. Like for parents who's. Whose children have left the church. The church's response today is like, well, God will sort it out on the next life kind of thing. Like, yeah, like you there. I mean, if the parents did everything they had, like they could do, God is they. And everything they had to do to be exalted, God can't really keep you away from your children and how that's really gonna play out.

Gerardo Sumano [02:55:37] We have Elder Bedner talking a lot about like, kind of almost like children being able to receive exaltation through the faithfulness of their parents and stuff like that. It just leave it really ambiguous and take out the legalism and say that we don't understand. That would be a great solution anyway.

Tyler Perry [02:56:00] So going back to literalism. So this is talking about what we really wanted to focus on here with the literalism is what are called the clobber scriptures. So the first thing is Sodom and Gomorrah always gets brought up by people as like, here's the sign that being gay is bad because the Bible says, look at what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. If you read In Ezekiel, chapter 16, 49 and 50, it clearly identifies the sin of Sodom as failing to care for the poor, being caught up in riches and all that stuff. So it's basically the Book of Mormon pride cycle. That's what destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Tyler Perry [02:56:31] Not anything to do with what we would consider homosexuality. The Levitical practices was discussed in Leviticus with the abomination of lying with a man, with a woman. That is by several scholars it has been identified as talking about specifically priest practice, temple practice, and then the Pauline discussions.

Tyler Perry [02:56:56] There's some debate here about the specific words that Paul uses. It may be discussing pedophilia, but it really seems to be relating overall to the Greco Roman practices of homosexual activity. But these aren't really the same thing as modern committed homosexual relationships. It's also important to note that in Mormon theology and Mormon doctrine, the Bible was not written for. For our day, with the exception of Revelation.

Tyler Perry [02:57:24] It's written as kind of a reference, talking the theology of the past. The Book of Mormon was written for our day. So Moroni is supposed to have seen our day. He should know that this is issue number one for the Church. Besides, like history issues. This is like one of the most significant issues. Why is he silent? Why is Nephi silent on this? Both of them are completely silent on the issue, but they should sure are great about talking about issues that were present in the 1820s. And doctrine and Covenants is equally silent on. Sorry, was that too much shade thrown there?

John Dehlin [02:58:01] I loved it. I mean, people need to think about what you just said. That's a really important point.

Tyler Perry [02:58:09] Yeah, but if they're doctor Incumbent is silent on this as well. And when was the last time that a revelation was put into Doctrine and Covenants? So it's important to recognize that when we talk about theology and doctrine, we are talking about what's canonized, what shows up in General Conference or in a talk at a fireside. It doesn't really hold the muster of canon. It doesn't really hold the muster of actual theology by our own doctrines. It has to be accepted by the body of the membership. And that hasn't happened since what Declaration two. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:58:50] Yep.

Tyler Perry [02:58:52] Do we lose?

Gerardo Sumano [02:58:52] John, I'm here.

Tyler Perry [02:58:56] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [02:58:58] I mean, I mean, the proclamation on the Family hasn't been ratified as official doctrine, so.

Tyler Perry [02:59:05] And it won't be.

John Dehlin [02:59:06] And yeah, it can't.

Tyler Perry [02:59:09] It doesn't hold up. And I. I think the Brethren know that. I think they're smart enough to recognize that.

Gerardo Sumano [02:59:14] And I love when Kyle Ashworth makes this point. Like the Family proclamation actually gives this a little bit open a Little bit of opening where there's this sentence about. And different circumstances may apply for this individual circumstances.

Tyler Perry [02:59:30] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:59:31] So even the family proclamation has some kind of room to be open to, you know, neo apologetics in the future if anything happens. But anyway, so we can go to the next slide. John, about getting away of mixed messaging. Just keep the message consistent. God loves you no matter what. Remove all the conditional love messaging that the Church has done. I mean, they're already have removed talks by. By Packer from the Church's website. So they can, they can still do that. Right? Like just teach that everyone's welcome and we don't. That way we don't need any more apologetics twist and. Or just.

Tyler Perry [03:00:27] Yeah, so. And one of the things I wanted to highlight here with this line of reasoning is that as I mentioned before with the M. Russell Ballard quote and other places, there is so much rhetoric of there is a place for you in the kingdom, you belong here. There is a place. And this is stuff that Charlie Bird and Ben Shilotti echo on a routine basis.

Tyler Perry [03:00:52] But where is it? And not even they are able to answer that. It's time that the Church actually commits to a place. This is where you belong. We've addressed that with the previous solutions. Right. So that was the reason why we gave the solutions. Here's a place now we can start to actually work forward. And the way that we go to do is to address those spiritual traumas that we discussed at the beginning. This is it. We can keep the messaging consistent by saying not only is there a place for you, this is where you belong.

Gerardo Sumano [03:01:25] And then the other one is like, get rid of the idea that leadership speak for God and, and then for you, like they receive revelation for you through God. This is, this is just like a bankrupt idea that is really rooted in spiritual trauma and the practice of lay ministry, which. And then the idea that bishops can receive revelation for. For members, which ironically Elder Bednar already started doing in this last face to face. I thought, I thought it was pretty groundbreaking where he acknowledges. I don't know if it was a mistake, but he literally says that bishops cannot receive revelation for you, that they can only counsel and bishops cannot tell you what to do.

Tyler Perry [03:02:18] Yeah. Now to clarify, what he says is they cannot receive an answer for you. Yeah. Just to make sure we're getting the wording clear so that way apologists don't turn around and try to twist your words here, Roger.

Tyler Perry [03:02:29] Because what he says is that they can't receive an answer. The reason why we're talking about ending this practice of lay ministry. Besides, like all of the myriad issues that have already been brought up on Mormon stories a thousand times before about the sex abuse issues and all of that that come into play, it's because the only way to grant authority to a lay ministry to speak like in a way that's theologically impactful is to basically say that they speak for God. You can't do it in a way where it's like, this guy knows the Bible really well. He was called of God, you know, he felt like this calling.

Tyler Perry [03:03:01] You can't do the stuff that like good Christian churches do or just good churches in general do where they're, they're more affirming. You can't do those things in Mormonism because you have to give your lay ministry authority. And the only way you can do that is by saying that they speak for God.

Tyler Perry [03:03:18] But then you also have to undercut it because there are all these problems that show up and there's all these times where they make bad callings and then they wind up paying a 250 million dollar settlement for things. And then there's times where, whatever the case may be, we see these situations where, you know, trust them to make the right choice, have faith that they're going to make the right choice, that the calling is going to be correct or things like that. But all evidence to the contrary. There are plenty of times in which it seems like mistakes have been made.

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:49] Yeah.

Tyler Perry [03:03:50] Or God has a really deranged sense of humor and we need to get away from him.

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:54] Yeah, yeah. And John, you can go to the next slide. That's pretty much the end of. Of these ideas on how to maybe make the church as a better place. Richard Atkinson said that he thinks that the idea of making another tier in the celestial kingdom somehow helps people. That is just hard to listen to. That was. We were just like echoing what RFM and Bill Real came up with solutions and brought them up. And then we're just offering also our.

Tyler Perry [03:04:34] I do think that issue or that particular solution has significant problems. It is the solution with the path of least resistance. It's the easiest one to put forward, but it does have significant issues. I would rather we come up with a solution that actually theologically makes sense and is equitable and affirming to all.

Gerardo Sumano [03:04:54] Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, John. Yeah, there you go. So, yeah, prior to prioritize affirmation and the divisiveness of musket fire rhetoric, you know, hello. Allow the safe, healthy, consensual exploration of all facets of one's identity. Like, and this Elder Oaks rhetoric of, like, stop, like, he wants to. For people not to identify themselves as gay or lesbian. Just end all that and then finally just stop the spiritual bullying. You know, like, embrace everyone's spiritual journey. If we're really going to talk about Jesus, let's talk about what Jesus did, like, positively and. And the way that helps people, I think.

Tyler Perry [03:05:42] Yeah,

John Dehlin [03:05:44] well, yeah, And I love those suggestions. I think that they're very much potential things the church can do. And in some ways, the church ceases to be Mormon the minute that it stops having all these commandments and all these rules, because high demand religions need that. They need to control behavior. That's how high demand religions work. They need sexual shame.

John Dehlin [03:06:14] The literalism. We're stuck with it because the words have meaning. And so it's hard to teach members to take. Don't take the scriptures too seriously. Don't read them literally because. Because then the members will be like, all right, I won't pay attention to them at all.

John Dehlin [03:06:31] And it'd be nice if they could keep their messages consistent. That's one thing. With all their money, they should be able to do that. They should be able to get on the same page. However, they don't, because they need to speak out of two sides of their mouth. They need to try and keep all the. All the family members and church members that are empathetic with LGBTQ people, because, let's just face it, the church cares a lot more about the family members of LGBTQ people than they do the actual LGBTQ people, because the number of family members of LGBTQ people is 10 to 20 times the number of LGBTQ people.

John Dehlin [03:07:11] And so they have to send messages that don't alienate the friends and family of LGBTQ members, but they also need to not alienate conservatives and orthodox members, making them think that we're too much changing to cave to social pressure or becoming too liberal or progressive. So that's why the church has to send those mixed messages. It's doing that strategically. I would argue it's doing that intentionally.

John Dehlin [03:07:41] They're not dumb. The church leaders are anything but dumb. And they've got more money than Heavenly Father at this point. So they've got the best advisors in terms of consultants and PR people and marketing people. They have to speak out of both sides of their mouth to not have the church fracture and fall apart. But this idea of the leaders no longer speaking for God, that literally is the value proposition of Mormonism. That's how the missionaries begin the Missionary discussion. So I'm not trying to poo poo your recommendation. I'm just saying that the minute that the church stops saying that their leaders speak for God, it's no longer the church that we all joined and gave our lives to. So that's going to be that. That is the hard. I think that's the hardest one of all.

Tyler Perry [03:08:35] I would agree with that. But I do want to push back on this idea that it's no longer Mormonism. So I know this is both a warning story for them, but also it's an example, I think, of how to do Mormonism right. I have a lot of holy envy for the Community of Christ. They're doing Mormonism right.

Tyler Perry [03:08:54] They're affirming they. But they did suffer a lot for doing this, for accepting women, for accepting LGBT members. But they've also done Mormonism in a way that it should be done. And the Brighamites can do that too. It's possible. And they have more money, so maybe they can do it better. But I think they're also looking at that as a case study and saying, well, look at how much a community of Christ suffered for that.

Tyler Perry [03:09:21] But in terms of the theology, in terms of the actual, actual doctrines, the actual background that we've got, you can do Mormonism this way. Mormonism can function this way. Community of Christ is like solid proof of that. But can you do Brighamite Mormonism that way?

John Dehlin [03:09:38] I'm a big fan of Community of Christ. I'm a big John Hamer fan. I've interviewed Steven Veazey, their Prophet on Mormon stories.

Tyler Perry [03:09:47] Great interview.

John Dehlin [03:09:48] Amazing people. And the church is not in a good state. Like I just read today that the or yesterday, Community of Christ may sell the Kirtland Temple to the Mormon Church because they're out of money and they're needing money. So you can. You can hold up Community of Christ as a. As a moral example. But their financial position, their membership position, their market share, unfortunately, is dwindling. Now, John Hamer is doing his best with others to resurrect that, but it's a fraught example to hold up because some would argue that church is dying, if not on its deathbed. That's not what I want to see happen, but it's just a. It's a difficult. It's a difficult example because the brethren are all about more money, more members, more growth, more power. And this is not the way for more money and more power and more members.

Tyler Perry [03:10:43] On the flip side, they do have enough money that just off of the interest alone, from the Ensign Peak Fund, they can run, they can, they can cover the operating costs of the church, and that's hardly all that they've got. So they're not going to run into the same problems as Community of Christ. They can't, they, they, they, monetarily speaking, they cannot run into the same problems as Community of Christ.

John Dehlin [03:11:02] Yeah, so it's just immoral.

Tyler Perry [03:11:05] That's all that it is. It's immoral.

John Dehlin [03:11:07] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:11:08] But in some way, I, I, I'm, I, I'm more on like, John's side a little bit than, than Tyler on this. I, but I did wanted to talk about this with Tyler just because this hopefully gives. If apologists are listening or public figures, whatever you want to call yourself are listening, you can see the high stakes of what the church is doing and also what kind of change you're expecting. Is it real? Is it real? Is it reality? Is that gonna happen? Is it worth your, your time? I don't know. I don't have the answer. But I mean, I think it just puts it into perspective, like how far the church has, would have to go in order to be on a place where they are healthy for, for everyone. And, but specifically, like we're talking on this episode, LGBT people.

Tyler Perry [03:12:12] And if you truly stand up for that community, if you truly stand up for LGBTQ Mormons and you also want Mormonism to be a good place, I mean, isn't it worth fighting for? I don't disagree with John, to be clear. I don't. This is a value proposition that's put forward in an effort to try and make Mormonism good. But the problems are significant.

Tyler Perry [03:12:35] But apologists can do a lot more than I can. Those that are actually at the front and representing the church and acting as spokespeople, they can turn the screws on the church in ways that we can't. And it's been those thoughtful critics, but also those thoughtful apologists who are willing to push it. It's Richard Bushman taking, taking Fawn Brody and putting it in rough stone rolling that suddenly makes everything that Fawn Brody wrote acceptable in the Zeitgeist. And that's what we're trying to accomplish here, I think, with these ideas, is that you take these ideas that are not acceptable, but then you, as the apologists who actually represent in a meaningful way the church, start putting it into the zeitgeist in ways that work.

Tyler Perry [03:13:18] We're critics who are pushing it kind of far because this is the ideal we want to see. But maybe you can come up with A solution that's actually going to benefit. Take our ideas and make it and run with it.

John Dehlin [03:13:28] Well, one of the ideas I want to celebrate is this idea of relaxing the internal tension and stopping the bullying. There's stuff the church can do that will only be good. Stop excommunicating LGBTQ Mormons and same sex married Mormons. Stop the hateful rhetoric. Stop the hate speech. Stop the warlike rhetoric. Just do no harm. Like, if they can't fix the problems, at least stop creating more problems by. By the hateful and damaging words they use. Nobody benefits. Elder Holland, BYU didn't win. From Elder Holland's talk, the church didn't win. LGBTQ people didn't win. The critics don't win. Nobody wins when the church says, when church leaders say stupid and hateful and harmful things.

John Dehlin [03:14:16] So that's something that I think we can all agree with. That can be changed today. And it doesn't. If anything, it minimizes the negative impact to the church of people leaving and people resigning, people stopping their tithing. So I think that's great advice that the church should follow today.

Concluding Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Tyler Perry [03:14:36] So we just had some concluding thoughts on this. And ultimately at the start, if the church was actually a good place, then we wouldn't be worried about what Charlie and Ben are saying. There'd be no issue. But the problem is that the church isn't a good place where, and we've seen that empirically, like there's high rates of abuse, high rates of trauma in the LGBT community and in other communities as well. I don't want to say that this is exclusively an LGBTQ experience, but it's significant in that community.

Tyler Perry [03:15:10] And these public figures, they have a responsibility to speak out and make Mormonism better. The self indoctrination tactics that Charlie Byrd espouses in chapter nine of his book, forcing yourself to accept the current teachings, even though you know that it's harmful, it's not helpful. And it's like you said there, John, like it just. It serves to divide, it serves to harm, and nobody wins. And apologists or those spokespeople, they should dare to stand for truth and goodness, even if it means standing alone.

John Dehlin [03:15:43] Yeah, I love it. And I just want to add one of the most important things you could ever do as a progressive or post Mormon is read on the Record A chronology of LGBTQ plus messaging by Kyle Ashworth at Lattergate Stories. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. But if you, even if you don't care about LGBTQ people and just want a really effective document to show how incompetent prophet seers and revelators have been over the past 100 years. Go read this document.

John Dehlin [03:16:17] It's super powerful and this is awesome. You guys have been great. Thank you so much. I really want to quickly thank Janice Tanner. Janice made a 20 donation through a super chat feature on YouTube. Want to really thank anyone who provides us with financial support. But, you know, we. We try and pay, you know, our. Our staff, we pay Gerardo for his graphic design and cinematography stuff. We try and pay our co hosts. We need your financial support to make all this happen.

John Dehlin [03:16:48] So thank you so much for everyone who donates and I want to thank everyone who made comments today. We just love our chat participants on YouTube and Facebook and we just really appreciate everyone who made this possible. But mostly Gerardo and Tyler. I just want to thank you guys for preparing this presentation and for. For coming on and speaking it. It's really important work. And again, I want to say, Ben and Charlie and everybody, we love you guys. We don't fault you. It's systems, not people.

John Dehlin [03:17:21] Hope you can accept this crit criticism and feedback with love. And we hope we all want the same thing, which is less pain, less suffering, more health and happiness for everyone. So hopefully we can have a dialogue. And I just want to invite Charlie and Ben onto Mormon stories. We'd love to invite you to tell your stories and. And to have a dialogue where we. You can push back, tell us where we're wrong. What do you think, Gerardo? Do you want to interview Charlie and Ben for Mormon stories?

Gerardo Sumano [03:17:50] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:17:50] Yeah. Do it. Do it.

Gerardo Sumano [03:17:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:17:54] All right. Any final words, Tyler?

Tyler Perry [03:17:57] I'd love to talk to Charlie and Ben too, if there's a chance. I have good respect for them. I really do hope that they arrive at a place that's healthier and that they're able to help the church do the same. Apart from that, thank you, Gerardo, for reaching out to me, for inviting me to do this, John, for hosting me here. This has been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed this opportunity. This is a really difficult issue, but it's one that I love diving into. I think it's really important and it's meaningful to have this opportunity to speak out and to have a chance, a platform to use my voice, because I think that we LGBT Mormons who want the church to be a better place need to have chances to share what our experiences have been. And I do appreciate you opening up the Mormon Stories podcast platform form for that.

John Dehlin [03:18:50] Always. Always. Thank you, Tyler. It's so great to have you. Come back again soon and stay in touch.

Tyler Perry [03:18:56] I'd love to.

John Dehlin [03:18:57] Gerardo, any final word?

Gerardo Sumano [03:18:59] Yeah, just. Thank you, John, for doing this and covering this topic once again on Mormon Stories. I know it has been covered so many times. I'm sorry for listeners who find it tedious. I just thought. I think. I think some of the things hadn't been covered as. As. As far as, like, where we're at right now with the church's not only rhetoric, but its apologists. And I think it can give. We're not trying to tell people what to do, but maybe just some information can help people, including LGBT members of the church who might watch this episode, make some decisions into how to arrive to a more healthy, happy place in their lives.

John Dehlin [03:19:49] All right. Thanks, Gerardo. You're awesome. Thanks, Tyler. Thanks, listeners and viewers. Thanks to everyone who supports Mormon Stories Podcast. Your donations make this possible. If you're a donor. Thank you. If you're not a donor, please, please consider. Oh, my gosh, My computer screen is. Is being weird. Yeah, let me see here. There you go. There we go.

John Dehlin [03:20:18] For our. For our listeners and viewers, if you're. If you're a donor supporter, thank you so much for your support. If you are not a donor or a supporter and you like this programming and value it, less than one out of a thousand of our listeners or viewers are donors, don't feel bad if you can't donate. We. We give this away for free because we want everyone to enjoy it. But if you are in a position to donate and support us, If. If you can, please become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org click on the donate button.

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John Dehlin [03:21:50] Follow us on Instagram as well. And love each other, be kind to each other, be good to each other, and let's all find constructive ways to be part of the solution. That's what we're trying to do, and we encourage all of you to raise your voices and become parts of the solution as well. Thanks to everyone. You guys take care and we'll see you all again very soon on Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care everybody.

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