In this episode, we interview Laurie Lee Hall, a former bishop, stake president, and temple designer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who later came out as transgender while serving as a Stake President. Laurie shares her journey of growing up with a gender identity that didn’t match how she felt, her experiences on a church mission, and attending Affirmation for LGBTQ+ Latter-day Saints. She also discusses her work designing temples, her struggles with the 2015 Exclusion Policy for children of gay couples, her excommunication, and the church’s evolving policies on transgender individuals.
To view Laurie Lee’s original Mormon Stories, click here.
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guests: Barbara Jones Brown, Laurie Lee Hall
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's October 22, 2024, and today we are going to be tackling a really important topic and a really important story. It's also sort of a, you know, where are they now? Feature on Mormon Stories podcast. Today we are interviewing for at least the second time, Lori Lee Hall. Hey, Lori Lee.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:00:25] Hi, Joe.
John Dehlin [00:00:26] How are you?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:00:27] Great.
John Dehlin [00:00:28] And not only is Lori Lee an amazing human that we're so grateful to have back on Mormon Stories podcast, those of you who are die hard fans of Mormon Stories or who have been listening for a long time will know that episodes 770 to 773 were Laurie Lee's original Mormon story. Laurie has served as a Mormon bishop, as a Mormon stake president, and as chief architect for the Mormon Church and helped design, I don't know, several dozen Mormon temples as the chief architect.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:01:05] As many as 55, actually.
John Dehlin [00:01:07] 55, yes. So we're so thrilled to have Laurie back. Not only because the video, the lighting, the sound of our original interview wasn't optimal. Is that fair to say?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:01:23] This is very comfortable. Thank you, John.
John Dehlin [00:01:28] But also just because Laurie's story has evolved. And if that weren't enough, Laurie is publishing a new book, releasing a new book published by Signature Books. And unless the title is changed between the advanced copy and the published copy, the book is entitled Dictates of Conscience from Mormon High Priest. And I can add bishop and stake president and chief architect for the Mormon Church of Temples, et cetera, from Mormon High priest to my new life as a woman.
John Dehlin [00:02:06] And I'll just add that as someone who personally has very important people in my life who identify as transgender, this topic probably is more pressing, more relevant in some ways socially today than it was 5, 6, 7, 10, 20 years ago in terms of it being part of the public conversation and something that I detest in a nonpartisan way.
John Dehlin [00:02:37] I detest the politicization of an issue that's kind of a health issue, a mental health issue, and something that affects marginalized groups. So without getting political today, without mentioning any political candidates, without mentioning any political parties, we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to talk about the Mormon Church's recent policy changes regarding transgender individuals. That is pretty important, big news. That is also a really unfortunate change for those who care about the health and well being of transgender individuals. And if that weren't enough, we're also thrilled to have back with us today Barbara Jones Brown, head of Signature Books Hey, Barbara.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:03:23] Hello, John. Thanks for having me back with Lori.
John Dehlin [00:03:27] Yeah. And you. This topic is special to you. Why I think you helped edit this book. Is that right?
Barbara Jones Brown [00:03:36] Yeah. I was the editor of this book when Lori Lee and I first started talking about publishing her memoir more than two years ago now. She said, I'll go with Signature Books, but I want a woman to edit it. And so I'm the only in house female editor. And so I said I would be honored to edit this book. And it has been a great honor of my life to work with Lori Lee. I've learned so much from her and to edit this book and now to be publishing it next month.
John Dehlin [00:04:04] Well, we're super glad to have you as a co host today. I hope to have you on lots of times in the future. But while we're at it, I do need to remind y' all that Barbara. Barbara's been on several Mormon Stories episodes. Now, that's one of my favorite things about the past 12 to 24 months, is having Barbara and so many good Signature Books authors. But Barbara herself is the author or co author of several books, or at least two. How many?
Barbara Jones Brown [00:04:31] Just one.
John Dehlin [00:04:32] One.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:04:32] Yeah. I edited the first book.
John Dehlin [00:04:35] I still think of you as a co author of that first book.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:04:38] I did a lot.
John Dehlin [00:04:40] This book is called Vengeance Is Mine, the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the Aftermath. If you want to check out a really important Mormon Stories episode, check out Barbara's episode. She's also done several others. But also buy this book. It's published by Oxford University Press. Anything you want to this book. Just really quickly since we've done our episode and since the tours.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:05:05] Yes, it's won a few awards since then and it's received wonderful reception across the board, both from descendants of perpetrators as well as descendants of victims. And just in general, it's just been very well received. So we're honored by that.
John Dehlin [00:05:21] And just this week somebody messaged me and said, john, you should do an episode on the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:05:26] And I said, we have.
John Dehlin [00:05:27] I did. And here's Barbara's awesome book. Anyway, thanks. All right, so again, Barbara will be co hosting today's interview. Laurie. So for those who saw your interview already, we want to let you know that there will be several updates today that I think are really important.
John Dehlin [00:05:49] Not only kind of what's happened in Laurie's life since the interview, but also Laurie's transition in her faith. She's had an evolution in. In her faith. She has found love and partnership. And again, we're also going to be talking about so much more. So please tune in even if you've already checked out Lori Lee's past interviews, because I think you're going to be glad we did. But we're also going to be treading on some of the ground from the previous interview because for those of you who didn't check it out, we do want to kind of give you a sense for how a Mormon bishop, a Mormon stake president and a high level leader in the Mormon Church ends up transitioning.
John Dehlin [00:06:37] And so that's gonna be core to today's story. So, Laurie, anything you wanna say before we begin? Just to kind of set intentions or, you know, any disclaimers or any sort of thing?
Growing Up With Gender Dysphoria in the 1960s
Laurie Lee Hall [00:06:50] No disclaimers. But as I sit here again with you, John, I recognize just how much I've grown and evolved. I think we should all, over the course of seven years, grow and evolve. In our first interview, my emotions were very raw.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:07:09] I hadn't processed a lot of what had happened to me in a short period of time. And the bulk of the central chapters of the memoir touch on all of those things and describe them in a much fuller way than I was ever able to do when we were together before. Because I've been, you know, the separation of time between the occurrences and now as I've, you know, as I've delved back into memories, as I've processed trauma, all of those things have occurred at some distance from Utah, at some distance from the church, in a loving relationship in a place where I could really heal and feel what I was experiencing then and document it for the reading audience.
John Dehlin [00:07:55] Beautiful. Okay, so to kind of, to go back and cover a bit of your life story, maybe let's just do a couple minutes on your church upbringing through kind of your, you know, the time you kind of were of adult kind of married age. Just bring us up to speed on your church membership stuff and then we'll talk a bit about your career.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:08:24] Right. If I could start with feelings of a mismatch between my using some current day terms, gender identity, in other words, that as a five year old I felt like a girl, like my mom, like my sisters in my family.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:08:42] And that was at an early age. You know, as a five year old, I was quite shocked when mom explained to me that I should be standing at the pee in the toilet because my body was different. I didn't like that feeling. My five year old voice said that was unhappy feelings.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:09:00] I struggled with wanting to be seen as a girl when I was a child and that was awkward. But we're back in the 1960s, in that case, by the time I was a teen in the 1970s, I. The thing I wanted the most was to completely conceal my identity as a girl, but to find ways to really affirm that, you know, in private, in secret ways. And as I got to the point where I was headed off to the School of Architecture at Rensselaer, I wanted to come out, I wanted to be visible, I wanted to go live my true, authentic life again using terms that I have today that I didn't have then, but I could not see a pathway forward at that time and realized that as I started off towards college that I was going to have to decide how was I going to live my life.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:09:56] And I buried. I made the decision to bury my female identity and never think of it again, or so I thought, so that I could become whoever the world wanted me and needed me to become.
John Dehlin [00:10:10] I've already got so many questions. Is that okay?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:10:12] You bet. I just glossed over my first 20 years.
John Dehlin [00:10:15] No, I love it. It's setting it up nicely. So there's this idea today of, like, contagion, like, if we. If we have role models, if there are people in the public eye who talk about transitioning, that it's going to give the idea for children that that's also an option for them or something that they might be interested in, as if people. It's the same sort of conversation that. That I remember having 20 years ago with gay people and lesbian people and bisexual people, that there's sort of this agenda to try and convert people's children. And I guess I just want to ask you, when you were five, in the 60s, right, you know, do you think you were influenced instead of just that being a natural, normal part of you, if somebody were to say, well, you must have been influenced by somebody, what would you say to that?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:11:11] Well, I would absolutely say that in 1966, when I was five years old, there was nothing in the media. The thing that influenced me or that affected me is I had bad dreams from watching Huntley and Brinkley show film footage of the Vietnam War. There was absolutely nothing about gender or, you know, I, perhaps by the time I was a teenager, would have been pleased to know that there was a pathway forward for somebody to transition. But I just felt like me, and it wasn't consistent with what people were saying to me. And as a small child, I was exposed to nothing, to answer your question directly, that could have influenced me to feel that way.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:11:53] My parents were conservative and heterosexual. I had family members that Just that were living normal. I say probably more like 1950s, the second generation of 1950s, as opposed to 1960s. We weren't Woodstock folk, we weren't hippies. We weren't, you know, my parents didn't do drugs. They didn't, you know, it was just, we were just small town Massachusetts, you know, kind of folk that just didn't have any of these influences. So I was me because of how I felt.
John Dehlin [00:12:28] Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure y' all know more about the history of transgender individuals than I do, but my understanding is thousands and thousands. There's documented records of transgender individuals. I don't know that they would have called themselves that 2, 3, 4, 5,000 years ago, certainly. But like all throughout recorded history, this is. Am I wrong that this is something that has been as much of the human experience as left handedness or red hairedness?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:12:58] Right, right. So I am left handed and I do have a red haired gene too. So maybe there's something to all that. But the. It's. It's complicated to say that yes, there have always been transgender or gender variant or two spirit peoples, particularly in well represented in other cultures. And yet access to that information and even that kind of history wasn't available to me as a child in my local public library. There were famous folks who had transitioned, you know, in Europe and in America in the 50s and 60s. I was not aware of that. And really there were just a few that were prominent enough to be known.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:13:47] Something that I've learned from my friendship with Lori Lee and from my work in editing this book, I wanted to learn all that I could about the transgender experience, knowing nothing, literally nothing about it before. But I listened to some books, some audiobooks written by other transgender individuals that Lori Lee recommended to me. I also went with Lori to affirmation conferences where I met other transgender folks and listened to their stories. And what struck me, what I learned is that the experience is they all don't know that anyone else like them exists. And they all know from a very early age, 3 to 5 years old, that their gender identity doesn't align with their biological sex assigned at birth.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:14:33] And their experiences, whether it was in the 1950s or 40s or in England or in Hasidic Jews, whatever, whatever. The experience is all almost universal. And so to me, that was just. That is one more evidence that this is something that it's not somebody, somebody convinces you to be. It's not something that you learn by looking at somebody else. It's just something that's inherent Born that way. So that's been something that I've learned about this experience.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:15:04] Generally, we understand that little children ages 3 to 5 begin to form their understanding of gender and the differences between the sexes. And it only makes sense that by age 5 that many who feel the gender mismatch, the incongruity, the conflict, do, at that point, realize it based on the fact that they've developed their understandings in, you know, and how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them in the world. And there's the disconnect.
John Dehlin [00:15:38] And I love it that you brought up the term, Laurie. Gender variant, because gender is not binary. It turns out there are people very important in my life that identify as non binary because they feel comfortable neither identifying as male or female or as man nor as woman. And it took me a while. I always consider myself an LGBTQ ally, but I didn't put much thought into the T. I just added it because that was part of the acronym. And it wasn't until I got to know people who were transgender or non binary where I started really needing to seek to understand and even rethink, rewire my brain around gender.
John Dehlin [00:16:24] And it turns out that it's really easy to confuse sex with gender. There is biological sex. There's XY chromosomes and XX chromosomes. But it's more complicated than that, because as we've talked about, even on past Mormon Stories episodes, there are intersex individuals that neither qualify as XX or XY or that have variabilities in their body development that make it so. Even sex, even the discussion of biological sex is much more complicated than a simple binary.
John Dehlin [00:16:58] So there's that. And again, intersex individuals, as I understand it, have a prevalence comparable to left handedness, which is between 1 and 2% of the population. So it's 1 out of 100 or 2 out of 100. That's a lot. And, but then beyond that, when you start thinking about what is a woman and what is a man, is it lifting weights? Is it having an assertive personality? Is it having a career? Is it being a parent, a nurturing parent? It's very easy once you start realizing, once you start thinking about it, that gender is a social construction.
John Dehlin [00:17:39] And even different societies construct gender in very different ways. I'm kind of just spilling some of the ways that I've processed, but I guess take that as an opening for either of you to kind of jump in there.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:17:51] Well, you just said a mouthful, and it really was a brain dump of everything. But to hit on a couple points that you made and to reinforce them. I like what Barbara has said many times as we've traveled together, and that is to really become an ally, it's. It's super critical to get educated and to have some understanding. And I appreciate, John, the fact that you recognize the importance of gaining that understanding by getting to know individuals and hearing their stories, by publishing their stories and becoming an ally through appreciation of the goodness of people who have walked in these circumstances.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:18:35] I actually had to become an ally to non binary people because my experience really had been in a very binary world that I really felt like I was not way over here in XY land. I was over here in XX land. And then I started to meet particularly young people who were non binary or gender fluid.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:19:00] And I had to learn to appreciate their circumstances and what they were feeling and experiencing so that I could be more supportive to them. Which, one would think if you were transgender, you had it all figured out. But no, there's all kinds of complexity associated with sexual orientation and gender identity and how those intersect. And then the Z axis is your faith spectrum. And all of these things come together to map out who we really are. And we need to be comfortable with the fact that there are people in all parts of the quadrants of those X, Y and Z realms.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:19:39] I love the fact that we can share stories and that we can be transparent with regard to what we've experienced and that others find that information beneficial to them. I have particularly focused in writing this memoir on the need for young people who are seeking to find a lit path forward, like I did at one time, to be able to help perhaps light that path by offering my story.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:20:15] And I think it's crucial to point out the reason why Laurie wanted to do this memoir was to change lives and to even see the suicide rate for transgender individuals is very high. And hopefully by publishing more books like this, by sharing more stories like Lori's, we can save lives and make things happier lives for people.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:20:38] Yeah, I think we'll get into this more as the interview progresses. But in some ways that are real to us as transgender and gender variant individuals, we've felt in the last few years like the whack a mole. Every time we pop up and try to say, say, look at me, I'm being vulnerable, I'm being visible. We get whacked down again by some anti transgender something, some ignorant statements about what it means to be trans or why that happens, like media influences or whatever it may be that we keep coming out and trying to integrate more fully into society, and we get whack a mole again.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:21:20] And that, that is really what I think increases periodically, quite frequently, sometimes the suicide idealation, it's 10 times, typically 10 times the rate of the average person in the cisgender public. That individuals feel that there's no way forward for them, no safe place to be in this world that's not designed for them.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:21:48] And.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:21:48] And that perhaps completing suicide is the only answer. It's not the only answer. There's a much better, joyful, hopeful way forward. And that's part of what I'm trying to show.
John Dehlin [00:22:00] Yeah, absolutely. And I think the best way to do that is just through story. So we'll come back to this matter of mental health and medical health. But let's go back to your story. You know, you talked about knowing from the time you were five, talk a little bit about your lds, I'll say upbringing, but that may or may not fit. So how did the church come into your life?
Joining the Church, Mission, and Marriage
Laurie Lee Hall [00:22:26] Right. So I ended on purpose at the departure for college because it was my freshman year at Rensselaer that I was introduced to the LDS Church. So prior to, during my youth and childhood, I had no access to the LDS Church. I wasn't aware that it existed. But I had a classmate, as I described in the memoir, that liked to talk about religion. She was lds and I was open, apparently, and kind of yearning for some information, for some answers to spiritual questions. And the things she offered to me felt real good to me, felt like they filled my void of spirituality in many good ways. And so I became a member of the LDS Church through baptism in my freshman year at college.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:23:15] And.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:23:15] But there was also, and I reflect on this much more in the memoir than I think I ever did in the journey as it was happening, just how profound it was to say I buried my female identity and I wasn't going to live that way because I couldn't live that way. That the Mormon Church then provided a significantly clear pathway forward to live as a productive, healthy, contributing male, husband, father, provider, leader, priesthood holder, priesthood holder. All of these things that would help me to be the kind of male presenting person that the world was telling me that I needed to be. And so I headed down that path with lots of enthusiasm, did everything that I was asked to do, and ultimately excelled in many ways in Mormonism as a supposedly white, heterosexual, cisgender male, which is what the church is really good
John Dehlin [00:24:16] at supporting, I have to say. RPI Rensselaer Polytech Institute I think of it as Ivy League caliber University. It's one of my Friends, top valedictorian from my high school, went to RPI as a naval engineer. So for those who don't know, this is a top notch school you went to as an architect, I just had to throw that in because it's a big deal. And so, yeah, if you're going to be a man in all its sort of modern connotations, the Mormon Church can help you be that, you know what I'm saying? Whether or not that's necessarily healthy for you or what you really want. But so really quickly, so mission, temple, marriage, do you want to just talk about kind of those milestones?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:25:05] Sure, sure. So I was in a five year program in the school of Architecture. After year three, I went and served an LDS mission.
John Dehlin [00:25:15] As a convert.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:25:16] As a convert three years into my membership in the church because I truly believed when President Spencer W. Kimball said every worthy young man should serve a mission, that that included me. And so I had this mission for the church 18 months in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and had just phenomenal experiences there.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:25:39] Found myself designing and creating things for the mission that maybe were previews of what I ultimately would be able to do working for the church. I came home, knew because the mission president had made it crystal clear in my mind that the next step on this priesthood path was to find a young woman who, who I could take to the temple and that we should start raising children and having a family.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:26:08] As I completed my education the last two years at the School of Architecture, and I did all of that in quick succession by the end of the 80s, I'd been married five years, had three children, was a licensed architect. All of those things occurred in rapid succession and I was well on my way.
John Dehlin [00:26:28] All right, okay. So, Mary, in the temple you said you had five children?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:26:35] A total of five children, ultimately, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:26:38] Okay. And one thing that took me forever, way too long to understand, is that sexual attraction is different than gender identity. And so whether you're attracted to men or women or both or neither, in the case of asexual people, that's a totally separate question than what gender you want to present as.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:27:00] Absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:27:01] So to what extent are you comfortable just talking about that? If for no other reason than to help solidify in people's mind that sexual attraction is different than gender identity?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:27:13] So I can offer kind of a later understanding in my life as well. As I was transitioning my presentation, I would often be asked what was my sexuality? And I really felt like I needed to identify, you know, if we're going to fit into the definitions that the current Western culture has. You kind of have to figure out who you are before you figure out who you're attracted to in order to be able to fit the definition model and provide that answer. So as I got to the point where, you know, we're. I was able to comfortably live as and present as my authentic self as a woman.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:27:55] I could say that I was a woman who was. So to give a little background before I reveal the whole answer, I note in the book that I had some friends growing up in elementary school, middle school, high school that were guys that I hung with, trying to act like a guy who I had attraction to. I was. I was attracted to them like a schoolgirl friend would be attracted to another to a guy.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:28:30] And, you know, so I reveal a little bit about how that complicated my experience as a teen, just as would anyone who was attracted to anyone as a teenager. It's complicated.
John Dehlin [00:28:41] Did you wonder if you were gay as a teenager or would you have even thought of it that way?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:28:46] I didn't think of it that way because I still inside, still identified as a girl. But by the time I was 14, 15 years old, I was feeling attracted, sexually attracted for the first time to a fellow that I was friends with. That it was like, oh, I'm feeling something here that I hadn't felt before as I've known him. Which is kind of natural at that age. I do tell a story about kind of almost exposing that attraction in a classroom setting and got slapped down in a way that helped me realize that, yeah, you don't talk about that kind of stuff. You don't let people into that part of your life.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:29:30] But then I joined the church and I go on a mission and I come home and I go to the temple, marry a young woman. And somewhere along the line, whether it was Mormonism or just my growth and development as an individual, I was okay with being attracted as well to the gal I married. And, you know, we had children and all of that occurred. And as I define myself more now, today, it's more of a pansexual kind of orientation, because as I develop relationships with individuals, that's where the bonds and the attraction come in.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:30:13] And it's not overtly sexual. I'm not a very sexual person. Less so at this point in my life, and I guess that defines the answer. I'm a woman who's attracted to really good people, and I happen to find one who I'm really deeply in love with.
John Dehlin [00:30:29] I've heard pansexual summarized as hearts, not parts. In other Words, you fall in love with an individual, not anatomy.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:30:37] Yeah, Right.
John Dehlin [00:30:38] Or gender presentation.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:30:40] I had a really interesting experience, as you mentioned, parts with a bunch of the older gay men in affirmation that I got to know when I was serving in affirmations leadership. And I found myself at a gay family home evening one night with, like, 25 gay men my age or older. And they were very curious about me, and I could tell at the beginning of our conversations that they really saw me as a new and exciting kind of gay man, you know, which I really didn't appreciate or like. And I wound up eventually explaining to them that for them, it was all about plumbing, and for me, it was all about the heart, and they all kind of got the oh, my gosh, I get it now kind of kind of thought.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:31:28] And I've been talking about how much I learned from Lori and other transgender friends and individuals and parents of transgender children, and that seems to be very consistent. I'm sure it's not 100% of the time, but that just. Oh, well, transgender folks tend to be attracted to anyone based on just who that person is, like you're saying. So it seems to be fairly common. Laurie, is that what you found with your friendships with other transgender.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:31:54] Yeah, it's frequent. I often rejoice when I see someone my age who transitions and their marriage holds together.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:32:01] And there are those marriages.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:32:02] Yes, there are. And because those individuals deeply love each other, it's not that when we transition gender presentation, we suddenly, poof, become someone else. It can sometimes feel that way. But for those who deeply love their spouse, who happens to come out as trans, and then transitions, it's a really beautiful thing when they can realize that this is an even more beautiful and blessed version of the person they've loved all their life. And some cases, that becomes difficult because you don't have the ability necessarily to change someone's sexual orientation. And so if that grinds too hard on the cisgender person, the cisgender spouse's feelings, that can be difficult. And I recognize and I honor those who need to step away because the new orientation situation is too hard.
John Dehlin [00:33:00] And for those who aren't familiar with the term cisgender, it simply means that the gender you were assigned at birth is congruent with the gender identity you feel inside.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:33:09] Is that correct?
John Dehlin [00:33:09] Right.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:33:09] Which represents roughly 98% of the population, all those lucky folks, I would say lucky, who don't have to wake up in the morning and try to figure out who they really are today and how they're going to expose themselves to the world.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:33:25] Wow.
John Dehlin [00:33:25] That makes me want to ask you a really hard question somebody asked the other day. I'll just say it like, if you could choose between your life experience and just having been born cisgender, which would you choose? Or do you even know how you would answer that?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:33:45] Well, given the fact that I wouldn't want to answer that question, assuming that I. My spirit essence, my internal sense of self was male, because that doesn't feel right to answer the question that, yeah, if I had arrived on earth and the doctor took a look at my parts and said, yep, congratulations, it's a girl, I would have been great with that, you know, if all things considered, because I would have grown up without the. The struggle and the conflict that I did experience and ultimately could have arrived at, you know, maybe more safely and joyfully at the position that I now attempt to live.
John Dehlin [00:34:32] Yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:34:33] Lori Lee often talks about the fact that she's here. This book, memoir, has a happy ending because she's still here. And not only that she has found love, her life, and is happy. But just that strikes me every time when you say this has a happy ending because I'm here, I'm alive, I survived this. In spite of the suicidal ideation that you went through and overcame eventually.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:35:00] Yeah. And move not just from survive, but to thrive.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:35:04] That's right.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:35:04] You know, that's where the happy ending comes and the book becomes hopeful simply because all of that occurred successfully.
John Dehlin [00:35:16] Beautiful. Okay. This is. And I so appreciate it's not your job to educate the rest of us, so this is an act of courage and resilience and of kindness for you to be willing to not only put your whole life on display, but also take the mental energy and the time and resources to help us all understand so that we can keep some of our loved ones alive. Maybe.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:35:44] Right.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:35:44] Precisely. I guess of all the great things I've ever done in my life, this would be the pinnacle of it, is to tell this story in a way that will save lives, that will benefit families, help folks to understand, and maybe even change the dialogue publicly in the public square to a place where it's much safer to be like I am, I think.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:36:11] And that's what this book has. And my friendship with Lori Lee is far more than my just editing her book. She's become a dear friend, and I'm so grateful because I was one of those who didn't know much about the transgender experience, wanted to learn more, but didn't know a lot how. And through my friendship and through editing this book, I've learned so much about it. And I can truly say I am an ally now because of this experience of working with Laurie on this book. And so I hope that others who also like me are curious, they just don't know a lot. They want to learn more, that they'll take the time to listen to Laurie Lee speak and to read her memoir,
Laurie Lee Hall [00:36:51] since we're on that subject quickly for a moment. Barbara mentioned earlier how important it was for me to have a female. A woman editor. And that was because I sensed that I needed to be able to tell my story more fully with a feminine voice. And I needed an editor who was going to tease out all those pieces. And I had no idea when I thought that just how real that was going to become. I was in a position, as I started drafting my manuscript where I could report on the experiences as though they were clips from a newspaper article.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:37:28] And.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:37:29] And in many ways, Barbara would stop me and say, but how did you feel when that happened? You know? And she dug into my heart and soul and teased out these stories until I managed to describe it. The thing that really surprised me is just how powerful those emotions and feelings were that she was teasing out, that I was trying to just report the facts. And I think that's what makes the memoir so successful, is that all of that experience and emotion that was down deep inside of me has been able to be told and revealed. And I think that's where the great benefit is. Not just the facts about. I went from A to B to
Barbara Jones Brown [00:38:11] C. I often wondered when I was doing this exercise with you, Laurie, if you were repressing those feelings and not expressing them in your writing because you had had to growing up to meet societal expectations of presenting as male. Being as male when you knew you were female and repressing your true identity, was that why it was hard for you to express those feelings?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:38:35] I think after 60 plus years of trying to bottle that all up. And I had a friend from high school not long ago say, all I remember about you is you were kind and gentle, but very constrained. And that kind of people sense that about me. But to really be vulnerable and transparent and exposed, it took a lot of help. It was great therapy.
John Dehlin [00:39:02] And if I could extend that just a tiny bit as a man, it might go beyond that. Because what I had to learn, studying the gender binary and the harm it causes is that it harms men too.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:39:14] Sure.
John Dehlin [00:39:15] And one of the ways it does is by sort of passing on this sort of toxic masculinity what does it mean to be a man? It's Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:39:23] It's.
John Dehlin [00:39:23] It's, you know, dominating. It's dominating. It's pushing your feelings down. It's not getting emotional unless it's anger, and that doesn't serve men well. And so in addition to having to suppress who you were inside, you were probably absorbing expectations of men, which is that men don't show emotion. Men are cold and calculated, and that's just bad for the mental health of men.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:39:51] Yeah, I would agree. Never having been one myself, I would agree that. That those pressures are real. And I was never that effective at being that kind of man anyway. But, yeah, I'm going to have this.
John Dehlin [00:40:04] I'm going to therapy to try and work that out myself.
Suppressing Gender Identity Through Decades of Faith
Barbara Jones Brown [00:40:07] Laura Lee does talk about how you were quick to anger before you transitioned. Do you want to maybe talk a little bit about that?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:40:16] Yeah, I think the best way to explain it was that I was incredibly frustrated inside all the time. And the frustration was because I was ignoring my reality. But the frustration was expressed in my frustration towards those that I worked with, those that I, you know, that I lived with, those that I served in the church. To some degree, being somewhat of a perfectionist, I pretended it was because I expected everybody else to do as well as, you know, on everything that I was trying to do myself. But the reality was, and the cold reality, the slap in the face was once I realized the key to not feeling so frustrated was to accept myself, it got a whole lot easier to treat myself and others with gentleness and kindness. That was more my nature in the first place.
John Dehlin [00:41:13] I love it. Really quickly, from your teenage years through to your time as a stake president and as a church employee and beyond, were there ever ways that you privately expressed your femininity, your womanhood, either alone, you know, and again, all along the way, did you have ways of staying in touch with that or privately expressing it, or did you just pack it all down and try to just turn it off completely?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:41:44] Yeah, most of the time it was packed down and turned off. But on occasion, and I'll describe it this way, I've often likened the experience of having gender dysphoria to standing on an airport Runway and to have a large jet engine right beside yourself, right beside your head. And on occasion, that engine's just kind of idling and there's this low rumble. That's gender identity.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:42:12] And even though I tried to suppress it, I think there was always some low rumble. But there were times, whether it was by circumstance something that happened. That was a stressor or something. Or when that jet engine gets throttled up and gets really loud and gender dysphoria, what we call that, the emotional impact of that mismatch, gets really loud and overbearing. And there were times, about 10 years into my marriage, there was a time when that absolutely crushed me and kind of took me out of commission for a while. And I had experienced suicidal thoughts. I had a plan and. And I didn't act on it, which I'm grateful for.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:42:54] But there were occasions when I had opportunity, both as a youth and as an adult, where if I had access to women's clothing, I took advantage of that and found affirmation and just a sense of relief occasionally from the roar of the engine.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:43:14] And then I'd feel guilt and shame, particularly. Particularly once I was a member of the church and a priesthood leader in the church that, listen, I'm the eldest quorum president. I can't be doing this.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:43:25] And you would do it in secret, too. No one knew.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:43:27] Always in secret. No one knew.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:43:29] At home at night.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:43:31] Yeah. The reality is that there was an enormous amount of guilt and shame associated with that. And I'd swear I'd never do it again. And yet then it happened, and then it happened, and then it happened.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:43:44] And.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:43:45] And it wasn't about wearing clothes or feeling a sexual fetish or anything like that associated with the clothing. It was about simply feeling right in myself. I didn't get off on doing it. I felt at peace by doing it. And then occasionally, I'd whack it back down and bury it and move on, which is what ultimately brought me to Utah, to working for the church, to being a bishop and a stake president. All of those things occurred as I kept trying to continue to live my life according to this pattern. The world expected of me, the church now expected of me, my family expected of me, and that I tried so hard to live. And Barbara asks an interesting question. Maybe you want to phrase that again, what you and Matt had talked about.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:44:42] Oh, yeah. So as I've been editing this book, I've been sharing it with my husband, like, every night, because it's just such a fascinating story. And sharing with him what I was learning. And he asked, I said, if you were to ask Laurie Lee a question, because I was preparing for another podcast, what question would you want to ask her? And the question he asked was, okay, so she successfully repressed it for 30
Laurie Lee Hall [00:45:07] years as an adult.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:45:09] Yep, as an adult. And she's at the apex of everything. She's the stake president. She's got her dream job designing these amazing temples for the church. She's the lead architect. She's living her dream, so to speak, successfully repressing it. Why then at 50. Why not at 50, just say, okay, I'm just going to keep doing this for 30 more years and then be done. Why at 50, did she feel like she needed to put everything on the altar of sacrifice, you know, risk everything to finally live her true gender identity? So that was the question he thought I should ask. And then when I posed it to Lori, she says, that is a very common question that I receive all the time.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:45:49] So particularly as that was happening, folks would ask, you know, people who didn't know me as well and right on up to my spouse would. Would say, can't you just hold on for a while longer and continue to do this? And it was really a case of once the gender dysphoria, that enormous jet engine, went to full throttle, which happened for me in about 2011, some 13 years ago, and I began to research and understand what it really meant to be transgender for the first time in my life. The toothpaste left the tube, and there was just no going back. We will not go back.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:46:30] I couldn't go back. I had to go forward. Because it was truly a case of live authentically or perish. It was, you know, not just survive at this point. It was either do this or not survive. And I know that's the case for many that walk this journey. Like I have the eventually, at some point, maybe it's for a younger person or maybe it's someone my age. It just can't not happen any longer.
Prayers and Spiritual Struggles With Gender Identity
John Dehlin [00:47:03] And before we talk about the actual transition, can you talk about your prayers to Heavenly Father during this time you're battling with your gender identity and what some would call dysphoria. Did it enter your prayers? Did it enter your conversation with Heavenly Father? And if so, over the decades, what was that conversation like?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:47:26] I didn't have what is often the common experience of either gay, lesbian, or transgender folk who are wrestling with their spiritual experience, their faith, and trying to make the deal with Heavenly Father that if I just do everything, that you'll take this away from me. I never had that impression that I wanted it taken away from me.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:47:54] I did want to oftentimes, you know, bury it and beat it down. But I never really counseled with God through prayer that, you know, gee, if I'm just nice, if I'm good enough, if I'm obedient enough, et CETERA et cetera. That just didn't happen to be my experience.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:48:11] But there was a point when I had gotten to logically accept that I was transgender and that I was, you know, in a private place and was able to express my, you know, through presentation, express my gender identity, that I finally knelt and approached Heavenly Father and said, this is me. This is Laurie Lee. I feel like I'm transgender. And I describe this in the book and really felt heaven's agreement and acceptance. And almost like, we're so happy that you've arrived at a point where you accept how we always knew you to be.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:48:59] And I guess rather than that lifelong struggle in prayer, I had that one key experience in prayer and then another one later that really confirmed to me that I was on the right track and that this is who I really was and that there was joy in heaven over it.
John Dehlin [00:49:20] And I want. Barbara may even have a passage. Do you have a passage that.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:49:24] I couldn't find it.
John Dehlin [00:49:24] Oh, no, it's okay. So really quickly, before we get to that part as well, because that's part of your spiritual transformation. But you did say experience experienced a lot of shame about dressing as a woman privately and then feeling shame about it. Did you repent to Heavenly Father for the times that you did that, or did you not feel the need to repent?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:49:44] No, I was very much repentant. My experiences in prayer were often very positive without saying so without saying the words that somehow I'm wrong and I'm bad. I was always optimistic that I could give me strength to go forward and to do the right things kind of thing, as opposed to spending too much time mourning over the mistakes that I made. It was like, I'm very much into the mode of I want to go and do good and to do better and to lean into Mormonism even more and to, you know, be stronger and more effective and more contributing and all this.
John Dehlin [00:50:30] Got it.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:50:30] And there is one point where you go to see your bishop. You're serving as stake president, and you see your ward bishop.
John Dehlin [00:50:39] And just to clear for never Mormons, it's important to help them understand.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:50:42] Sure.
John Dehlin [00:50:43] So a bishop is the leader of a congregation within Mormonism, a stake president is the leader of, like, 10 congregations, 10 or 12 of 10 or 12 bishops. So sort of like what a cardinal in the Catholic Church, it's a very high level position. And so the idea of you. It'd be like a cardinal going to a priest to confess.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:51:05] Right, right. And I don't know if that happens in Catholicism, but a few Years into my service as stake President, I got the feeling like, hey, maybe now's a good time to really clean the slate and, and sit and talk with my own bishop about these things that have happened in my past. And maybe that sense of relief that comes through sharing this with a priesthood leader, that very much a process I believed in, might help me to have even more rest and peace associated with all of that activity in my past. I don't think I was actually doing anything at that point in 2007 to express my gender identity, nor had I accepted it.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:51:53] It was just something I kind of wanted to get off my chest. I went to my bishop and put him in a very awkward position where the Stake President that he had been called by and trained by was there to explain this off script behavior.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:52:11] And poor man, he just looked at me and said, president, I got nothing for you. And you know, I said, well, I feel good having talked with you about it was the first time I ever expressed to anybody that I had ever done something like this, ever. Even your former wife, ever, ever, ever.
John Dehlin [00:52:27] Oh, wow. And so as a Mormon bishop, as the Stake President you confessed to, what did you tell him? What did you confess?
Laurie Lee Hall [00:52:35] I had it in terms of how I felt and thought at that time, which was, you know, there are times where I feel compelled to privately, secretly use my wife's clothing, you know, to express something, to feel something about myself that I don't think makes sense and it's not who I am, you know, And I said, I don't want to do this. I haven't been doing it for a while and, you know, it hasn't happened recently. I'm not feeling good, you know, current guilt over it. But I just, I wanted to let you know that this is the case and then see what happens.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:53:09] And your bishop was a counselor too, so you were thinking maybe he'll have something for him.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:53:12] He was a trained therapist. He was a trained therapist, you know, in 2007. He didn't have the words or the training either. You know, just. It's funny how this information has become much more mainstream just in the last couple dozen years and even be able to, to approach a therapist who understands this. That was quite a trick back in 2012. It's much easier, obviously, today.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:53:41] And Lori Lee, it's kind of humorous in the book, she says, I put this poor bishop in the position. Normally he wouldn't know what to do, so he would go to his stake president.
John Dehlin [00:53:50] Exactly.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:53:50] But the stake president was me.
John Dehlin [00:53:54] Yeah, I can't imagine Being a bishop and having your own stake president come out to you as dressing in women's clothing. I can't imagine being a stake president and going to your bishop and confessing to a lowly bishop. I know you didn't think of it that way. I didn't think of that. Confessing to a lowly bishop that you were tempted to dress in women's clothing, like, that's. It's almost like it would be if your story was put into a movie. It could even be a humorous, interesting.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:54:24] Yeah, it was a complicated moment, but one where I felt like I was really sincerely trying to, you know, be humble about it and say, you know, this is real. This is a part of who I am. And he and I served together for, like, another three years after that. And so, you know, life goes on.
John Dehlin [00:54:41] What does it mean to you? Like, Mormons believe that God calls, especially men, and all callings are of God, but certainly the calling of bishop or stake president comes directly from God. So was it confusing to you to have God, Heavenly Father, call you to be a bishop, call you to be a stake president, when you knew that you had this real serious conflict inside? Or did you just look at it as we're all flawed and, you know, everyone's going to be flawed and these are my flaws.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:55:13] Well, you know, there was an element in my psyche that I've followed this path. I've done everything. I've contributed all I can. I know I've got the. The tools to be able to serve in these ways. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to contribute and, you know, rah, rah. I'm glad to accept this calling. I'm going to work hard at it and accomplish good things for people. And only occasionally, and perhaps more so, as stake president, did I stop and think, you know, someday I'm going to have to say no to one of these types of callings because the day will come when I really have to be who I am and I have to talk with a 70 who comes to call me to a position or something.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:56:01] I knew later on, as we start to get into the transition, that as I had accepted being stake president in 2004, that the next time a big calling like that came, I was gonna have to blow the doors open and let everybody know and that obviously that opportunity never came because my transition progressed as quickly as it did.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:56:26] But I eventually got to the point where I knew that consistent with what the church's feelings were about the priesthood and that certain people, males, were priesthood leaders and Females were not that. Eventually, I'd have to say, I have this complication that you might not want to put me in that position.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:56:49] I did actually step away from an advancement at work because I had already come out to myself and accepted myself as transgender and was offered to. Interviewed to be the managing director of physical facilities. And I thought, nope, you're not going to be comfortable with me being in that position when all of the dominoes start to fall. And so I stayed where I was, and I said, no, you don't want me. You want somebody else. And I framed it in the terms of I was the story specialist as an architect, and they really needed a generalist, which was true, but they really wanted me. But they wanted the me that I was presenting to be.
John Dehlin [00:57:29] Yeah, managing director is about as high as it goes in.
Laurie Lee Hall [00:57:32] Right. You know that your brother had served in a position, and it was around that same time that Joel was managing director that. Yeah, I just knew that was just going to be too much exposure, although I was predisposed as it was.
John Dehlin [00:57:48] Okay, we're gonna. I promise you're gonna come back to the transition, but just while we're talking about your career, you did a lot of really important things for the church. Do you want to talk about just, I guess, at least two things, all the different cool projects you were a part of. But also, people always want to know what it's like to work at church headquarters and what general authorities and apostles are really like. You. There was a problem. I could always tell in our last interview. There was a lot you could say that you didn't want to say, and you may still feel that way. But let's talk about both. So first, let's talk about all that you did in your time working for church headquarters.
Rising Through the Ranks at Church Headquarters
Laurie Lee Hall [00:58:28] Yeah, it's important work. It was important work, and I was overjoyed to have the opportunity. And I rose up fairly quickly in the ranks and was a very young director of divisions in physical facilities,
John Dehlin [00:58:45] had
Laurie Lee Hall [00:58:45] the opportunity for five years to run the worldwide meeting house standard plan program design criteria for church buildings all over
John Dehlin [00:58:53] the world,
Laurie Lee Hall [00:58:56] and got moved shortly thereafter into temple construction, where I was responsible for the construction of temples all over the world. And when City Creek Mall was announced and several of my colleagues get conscripted over to the City Creek Mall, I took on both temple design and temple construction. So for the years 2007 to 2013, those are the golden years of being the chief architect of the church that I refer to as having responsibility for all worldwide design and construction of temples. And special projects. We put an Easter egg in the appendix of the memoir Dictates of Conscience, where I list all of my LDS projects, significant LDS projects, because I knew that some folks would want to know.
Barbara Jones Brown [00:59:53] Yeah. Just to summarize them, there's 55 temples that Laura Lee worked on. Probably some of the most high profile ones would be the Provo City Center Temple, which was the Provo Tabernacle but almost burned to the ground. Lori Lee helped preserve that and turn that into the beautiful temple that it is today. Also, things like the new Provo mtc, that was Lori Lee. The renovation of the Salt Lake Tabernacle, that was Laurie Lee. The church history library downtown, that was Lori Lee. It's all in the appendices, but just the projects that she worked on and just the standard meeting house program. So if you just go to a newer meeting house today, you're in a. In a design that Lori Lee designed. So there are sacred spaces all around the world that I think many Latter Day Saints don't even realize that they are enjoying. A sacred space created by Lori Lee Hall.
John Dehlin [01:00:48] I'm glad you mentioned that, because my advanced reader's copy doesn't have the appendix.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:00:52] Yeah. This is the next edition.
John Dehlin [01:00:54] Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Cool. It lists all these special projects. That's a amazing. And I think, you know, Mormons should think about. Active Latter Day Saints, should think about this reality that these are positions they believe are called by God. And, you know, in the temple is what, the most sacred part of the Mormon experience. And you, as you spiritually led, however that worked, you were a really important part of probably millions of Latter Day Saints spiritual enrichment and development. You as you. You know what I mean? Or at least as much of you as you were able to be at the time. Right.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:01:37] Yeah. And I hope these. Sorry, I hope these millions of Latter Day Saints understand when they're in these sacred. They have sat. They surely have sat in and enjoyed a sacred space created by a transgender woman.
John Dehlin [01:01:48] Yeah.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:01:50] And it really was all the more true in the last couple of years. The last third of the projects in that list were directed by me knowing I was me, not just presenting as something else, but realizing that this is who I am. And as I began my transition that we're not talking about yet, and experiencing the beauty of hormone therapy and so forth, that really reconfigured who I was in my emotions and mental health and so forth. The last couple years of my work for church headquarters were absolutely joyful and just so much fun because I was comfortable in my own skin, finally.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:02:36] And there's a photograph in the book of me on the construction site of the Provo MTC expansion. Although I was in a suit and tie presenting my part, there's absolutely radiant beaming joy coming out of my face and my smile because I was so happy with who I was becoming.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:02:55] And your hair's a little long.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:02:56] My hair's a little long. I was outside of church boundaries on that subject. But anyway, do you want to share
John Dehlin [01:03:02] at all what it's like to work for church headquarters, what it's like to work at that level of church headquarters, what it's like to work on temples at the church, and if there's anything you want to say about what it's like to interact with the bigwigs there.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:03:16] So to describe a little bit my exposure to the senior church leaders, I worked closely with the Presiding Bishopric and all the time that I was there, their general authorities of the church. But by the time I described, when I took over the design and construction of temples, I was then presenting design and construction information to the full First Presidency and other members of church leadership on a monthly basis.
John Dehlin [01:03:48] So you were presenting to the prophet of the church his first and second council.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:03:53] I was voiced to those presentations. I was responsible each month for bringing the presentation material to a point where it was as perfect as we could create it and bring it to the First Presidency and describe it and present it, answer their questions, receive their direction, and ultimately gain their approval to then go and construct these buildings. And then we'd show them progress photographs of construction every month. And just it got to be a very comfortable dialogue between myself and these senior church leaders.
Designing Temples and Working With Senior Leadership
Barbara Jones Brown [01:04:34] Laurie, as an example of that, do you want to share your story of working closely with President Boyd K. Packer on the Brigham City Temple?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:04:42] And that was a unique experience because as president of the Corps, President Packer should not have been in the pipeline of the development of a temple design, but because it was Brigham City, his hometown, and because of his particular interest in that temple in prominence, that a very gracious President Monson extended the opportunity for us to work with President Packer. And over the course of the design and the construction of the temple in Brigham City, which he ultimately was assigned to dedicate. So this would be 2008 to 2012, including the years when I was self accepting as transgender, I worked one on one with President Packer in the development of the design, in receiving his comments and in also sharing with him the progress of the project, ultimately wondering if every time I was standing in his office and sharing photographs with him, was he seeing through me or not?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:05:46] And he would always ask me, as we got closer to the end of the construction, you're going to get this finished before I pass on. And I'd say, well, you want to tell me when that's going to be president? We'll do our best. But we ultimately did finish it, and he was able to dedicate it. But it was a very intimate experience with someone who I think a lot of folks think of as being very difficult individual. I had just a very intimate experience with President Packer, not to say that I ever loved or appreciated the things he would say, particularly to the queer community.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:06:23] But it was such that we were, you know, we were dearly connected. And I was able to produce a product that not only he dearly loved, but that was satisfactory to the First Presidency and others as well. In conclusion, as he looked at the finished temple, he said to me something that I recorded in the memoir, and this I knew meant more to him than anything else, and that was that the Brigham City Temple was compared to the Salt Lake Temple like the Son, meaning the Son of God, is to the Father.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:07:05] And I couldn't think of a more generous spiritual compliment to say that we had created something in the 21st century that was that closely related intimately with the Great Salt Lake Temple, which of course, has now been beat up.
John Dehlin [01:07:26] That's beautiful. Talking to my brother about his interactions with apostles. Bednar Holland Packer. He has great love for these men. And I think it's natural sometimes for people who struggle in their faith or leave the church to kind of demonize these men as bad people because of basically their statements of general Conference or the policies that they author. But would it be fair to say that you found them to be lovely individuals to work with?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:08:04] For the most part, they were human. They were human more than anything else. Bear in mind that most of my time, when I had personal contact with the senior leaders of the church, that I was also serving as a Stake president.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:08:31] And I saw in them their efforts to do the best they could with the responsibilities that they had and the information that they had, as I was trying to do myself. And that I guess that way of looking at them, not as I put them on a pedestal, I never did.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:08:59] Not that I looked at them as being infallible, because I could see the difficulties and mistakes that they made without being critical of them, because I knew I was capable of making similar mistakes. I felt always that it was my responsibility to give them the very best Information so they could make the best decisions. A lot of our work was, although temporal and physical in nature, also had a very spiritual side to it, which I tried to tune into.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:09:36] And it seemed that as I did, they became more and more comfortable and trusting of what myself and my staff and my consultants were doing. And that made their jobs easier. And that felt good to me in many cases. I saw those senior leaders perhaps the same way that your brother is described as very thoughtful and sincere and compassionate individuals. Occasionally they had bad tempers and would say things that could tear you down pretty well.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:10:17] I think I describe in the memoir one instance when President Monson asked what moron made this decision. And, you know, I was responsible for that. But fortunately, the general authority sitting beside me took responsibility for that. Which that doesn't happen very often in church employment action.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:10:34] But your decision, the decision was following President Gordy B. Hinckley's direction. President Monson's predecessor.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:10:40] Right. And there's a whole bunch of.
John Dehlin [01:10:42] Was it worth telling that story?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:10:44] There was a whole bunch of stories in there that talk about the difference between prophetic priorities. You know, where one president is interested in these types of things. Like, for example, President Hinckley was very interested in efficiency and economy and repetition.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:11:04] Saving money.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:11:05] Saving money. Small temples getting stuck, getting everything out to the saints, the ordinances and so forth. His successor wasn't as interested in those things. He believed that the church had plenty of money. Now, we all realize that's true, to build whatever temples the church would ever want to build. And it was a different paradigm. But in that particular instance, building a temple that would have very much been satisfactory and celebrated by President Hinckley was moronic to President Monson.
John Dehlin [01:11:43] What part did Monson think was moronic?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:11:46] We had made particular selections regarding the systems, the back of house equipment for the Gila Valley Temple. And the temple department, who operated that temple inappropriately in my estimation, convinced President Monson that they were inferior systems like H. Vac stuff. Yeah, yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:12:07] And smaller temples. Right. That President Hinckley championed.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:12:10] Yeah. Ultimately, many of the smaller temples were found to be deficient in their construction. That was a black eye on that small temple program, the way that they were built and rolled out. Sometimes I had to tell those sad stories, you know, to the successor of the individual who made decisions. Nobody ever wanted to say what a sad and stupid thing it was that President Kimball allowed the Logan Temple to be demolished, you know, its interior to be demolished. And yet here we are living through the Salt Lake Temple, having a similar type of Interior demolition and loss of historic beauty.
John Dehlin [01:12:53] Do you think that's a shame?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:12:54] I do. I think that's unnecessary. An unnecessary shame that we lost that interior.
John Dehlin [01:13:04] So they're gutting the interior of the Salt Lake Temple?
Barbara Jones Brown [01:13:06] They did.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:13:06] They gutted it, yeah. It happened before it became public knowledge that it happened. And it happened mid project.
John Dehlin [01:13:13] From what I understand, that wouldn't have happened if you were in charge or
Laurie Lee Hall [01:13:16] I would have been probably fired from my position for protesting it because I felt very strongly that there would be ways to utilize that historic interior.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:13:27] And that was the original plan is what you told me.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:13:29] And that was the original plan was
Barbara Jones Brown [01:13:30] to just store it.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:13:31] The design had all been completed in order to be able to save the interior because it didn't need to be demolished. Because they were base, this is a lot of detail. But because they were base isolating of the temple, the interior would be safe from, you know, from destruction from an earthquake. It was the decision really to move from the live presentation of the endowment to the film presentation or the slide presentation of the endowment in the Salt Lake Temple, which completely changed the way the building had to work and unfortunately drove a mid project change to gut the interiors and lose the historic interior of the temple, which had really become so much of people's experiences. And moving through a live presentation of the endowment, which I always enjoyed, but we had done that before. We had destroyed our heritage before in Logan and we didn't learn from history. We repeated it.
John Dehlin [01:14:33] Why would they make that decision to destroy the interior of either temple? Any idea? Can you speculate?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:14:41] Well, in the case of Logan, I think again, it was the same thing. It was to move the Logan Temple to become a film oriented presentation of the endowment. It needed a different configuration. And that apparently is what drove the change in Salt Lake as well. It's sad when we lose the heritage of the live presentation, but I would have hoped against hope that I could have helped those teams figure out how to provide the alternate presentation within the historic setting. I don't know if that would have been possible.
John Dehlin [01:15:22] But for those who don't know, I did go through the Salt Lake Temple to do some endowment ceremonies. And wasn't there a room for the telestial kingdom and a room for the terrestrial kingdom and the room for the.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:15:34] The individual moves from room to room and receives the presentation of the endowment in the way it was in the 19th century through other living individuals.
John Dehlin [01:15:46] Live actors.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:15:47] Live actors set up a movie providing. Providing the presentation of the endowment, which in most of the modern temples since the 50s has been presented through film or slides. It's just those 19th century temples and the only one left now is Manti, where the live presentation and its original configuration survived.
John Dehlin [01:16:14] So you can go to Manti right now and do a live with live actors.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:16:18] Lord, do you want to explain why the Mantai Temple was preserved?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:16:21] Because there was such an upper uproar when the Salt Lake Temple shifting to film presentation instead of live presentation. And the fact that the demolition had occurred, that was driven by that. When members heard that and mourned that that had taken place on a grand scale, they mourned. It was also leaked that the same thing was intended for Manti Temple, which would have erased the Last vestige of 19th century live present as well as a lovely, again the only remaining 19th century temple interior. And so grassroots group of passionate Latter Day Saints and probably adjacent Mormon adjacent folk said no, don't let that happen. To the point where the church did decide ultimately to not demolish the interior of the Manti Temple, but to allow it to continue to present the endowment in the good old fashioned way.
John Dehlin [01:17:28] Yeah, really quickly. Just because this is one of the top two questions I get in my job. People always want to know if the top Mormon church leaders are actual believers. And my brother, after interacting very closely with pretty much all of them, he would say absolutely. In his opinion, they are all sincere, true believing Mormons, not cynical, no longer believing, sort of businessmen. Do you have an impression from your time with them if someone were to ask you that question of whether they are still orthodox, sincere believers or not, do you have an impression?
Impressions of the Quorum of the Fifteen
Laurie Lee Hall [01:18:13] So my impression is that Those at the Q15 level, meaning the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, my impression is that above all else, they're loyal to the faith and the organization, so much so that they would accept an assignment to do whatever was required of them.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:18:38] I think that is the most pervading sense that I get. There is certainly by the time you're the, you know, in the First Presidency, President of the Quorum of the twelve, there's a significant amount of authority and power to move the organization in the direction that someone personally wants to move it.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:19:02] Did I ever see glimpses of those Q15 level folk? No, they don't expose that. They don't, you know, if there are misgivings about things, you know, that's kept private. Even though the sense is. My sense is that there are misgivings about certain things that are currently done.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:19:28] There's not unity in the quorums the way that we're taught. I was told that unity in the senior quorums was the safety of the church. It's what kept the restored gospel flowing in its pureness. I don't believe that there is unity and I sense that there's not unity between some of these Q15 brethren. That doesn't specifically answer your thought, but in a way it does. If there's discord and there's contention in senior leadership, why is that? You know, is it their human frailty? Is it the fact that it's not as led by divine revelation as we would all hope that it would be?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:20:21] Case in point. And I carry it, I have it in the chapter on the exclusion policy where it was pretty clear that when then President of the quorum of the 12, Russell Nelson got up and explained how the policy of exclusion November 5,
Barbara Jones Brown [01:20:38] 2015 Laurie sorry, I want to jump in. Do you want to explain for people who don't know what that policy is?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:20:44] That was the church's anti LGBT or LGB same sex marriage equality exclusion that people in same sex marriages were considered apostates. They were pursued and many cases excommunicated. Their children were unable to receive the ordinances of the church and ordinations to priesthood while they lived in the homes of a same sex couple and ultimately would have to deny their parents way of life if they were to progress in the church.
John Dehlin [01:21:21] And this was a policy that was released in November 2015 in response to Obergefeld, the legalization of same sex marriage nationwide.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:21:31] That's exactly right. The church responded in that way because marriage equality had become the law of the land of the United States.
John Dehlin [01:21:39] You were working for the church at the time.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:21:41] I was working for the church at the time. And I was also working for the church at the time that a few months later In January of 2016, Russell M. Nelson, then President of the Quorum of the twelve, stood up and current prophet, current prophet today, but he was president of the quorum of the 12 then stood up and explained to a worldwide audience of young single adults this revelatory experience that the President of the church and the members of the quorum the 12 had regarding the introduction of that policy of exclusion and everything within side me and everything I knew about how these things work, how the sausage is made at the church administration building said that cannot be true.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:22:30] And that was my own personal sense. I didn't have any information that told me it wasn't true. But then subsequently to be a witness to the fact that none of the members of the First Presidency, the quorum of the 12 ever stood up and gave their testimony of that experience helped me to believe that, yeah, that was much more of a case of a policy got written, leaked, implemented, and tried to be forced into place and eventually three and a half years later was rescinded.
John Dehlin [01:23:08] That's called a continuing revelation.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:23:10] Yeah, continuing or maybe a temporary commandment. These days, I don't know what to call it other than the fact that it definitely was not the mind and will of God revealed to his prophet as was described. And that event was when I lost confidence in the moral authority of the senior brethren because it was pretty obvious to me that they weren't functioning the way that we've been taught that they should function.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:23:40] And so do they believe? I'm not at liberty to say. I don't know. But the way they're acting and functioning tells me that it's not the way the organization was supposed to be functioning, how we were taught it was supposed to function. And at lower levels, not as high or as visible as the policy of exclusion.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:24:07] I was witness to lots of middle level general authorities being really disagreeable with each other and disagreeing and having personal opinions about what should go forward, what shouldn't go forward, how it should be treated, what the decision should be. Just this constant turmoil. What's it like to work for church headquarters? It's like working in any other big, complicated, sometimes corporate and sometimes family business, you know, where the decision making is political, it's emotional, it's personal, it's difficult. There are agendas.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:24:49] All of those things occur. And that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It wasn't really a surprise to me. I just got immersed in it and watched it happen and tried to keep my own balance and integrity regarding the things that I was responsible for and that I had to offer in terms of information to make decisions. But there was a lot about it that was pretty much filled with human frailty.
John Dehlin [01:25:19] You may not be able to answer this or even have information about it, but I'll ask anyway. I've always suspected, especially now that they're building so many temples. I've always wondered whether there's any patronage or cronyism going on.
John Dehlin [01:25:35] You know, I had someone once tell me that they looked up the properties around the Orem, the new Orem temple that was built. And they claimed to be showing me deeds of, like, Bednar's children buying up property around the temple, almost in a speculative way, so that once they knew where the temple was going to be built, Bednar let his Kids buy a property around the temple so that then when the temple got built, they would all have a very sound investment. Now, I'm not making that allegation as being true at all. I'm saying someone raised to me this idea that the purchasing of land and the development of temples clearly is going to have an impact on property values.
John Dehlin [01:26:23] Construction companies that would be building the temples and there would be a lot of opportunity there for unethical behavior. Do you know, are there things the church does to make sure that type of stuff doesn't happen? Do you think that that stuff ever might happen? Or is that just something you either don't want to talk about or have no knowledge of? Worth discussing.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:26:47] Well, I certainly have no information about Orem Temple's site and you know, in Elder Bednar's family, although one of Elder Bednar's sons happens to be our former stake president in Area 70 in our community of Crestwood, Kentucky. And so I know Elder Bednar the younger well enough to, to recognize him. If I walk through Walmart and see him cronyism, benefiting from insider knowledge, that type of thing. I don't have really strong information about such things happening.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:27:31] They may have occurred. There may have been developers who were generous to the church and in providing a property so that their development that they were already working on could be adjacent to a temple. Certainly when we worked with Rio Tinto and the Ochre Mountain temple became the hood ornament, if you will, for the Daybreak community, that was a win win for the church and for Rio Tinto as a property developer.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:28:02] But, and I think anytime there's a true win win, that's business, you know, and church does a lot of business and church makes a lot of money and their for profit side benefits greatly from the things that the nonprofit side often does.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:28:23] So there's all of that that certainly occurs. But I wasn't witness to anything that was overtly inappropriate from a, from an insider trading point of view. Did it happen? Perhaps I was more concerned at my level that whereas I had responsibility during those chief architect years to sign contracts with those many design consultants and construction firms and how those firms were selected and how they were assigned to the future projects and so forth, that I ultimately had the final responsibility to make those selections and to sign those contracts, I was a pretty popular person in those days. And I found out just how fleeting that popularity was.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:29:20] When that assignment was taken away and I had another assignment, all of a sudden someone else else was receiving all the requests to be wined and dined and so forth. And I could have received significant gifts and opportunities and, you know, travel and vacations and places to go and take my family and, you know, beneficial construction efforts. And so, I mean, there's so many ways that I was approached to be able to, you know, yeah, let's do this for you or give you this opportunity that were clearly designed to influence my decision.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:30:05] As leaders of these companies were attempting to be my friend for the opportunity for me to sign an extra contract in their direction on a temple. I was wise enough to that and I would never, and I don't think I ever once in all those years was guilty of taking anything, even at the smallest level that could have been construed as a benefit because of the authority that I had to sign projects and sign contracts.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:30:41] I had seen that happen prior to my assignments in the temple department, in the temple construction department. I had seen that kind of thing going on. It was pretty common that those in senior director level positions were benefiting from on the side from their relationships with the vendors who provided services to the church. And I vowed that I would not do it. And I vowed that I would help those all around me to not do it. And I think that helped create some integrity. I lost friendships that I could have had of a lot over it, but I really didn't care. I really felt that where I was and the, the money that I was spending on behalf of the church required a lot more integrity than I had seen exhibited in, in the past by my predecessors.
John Dehlin [01:31:35] Well, it sounds like you were empowered to make those decisions on which construction companies to choose. And in that way it would be a good thing to hear that you were, weren't pressured and told use my son in law's construction company for example. That wasn't what you experienced.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:31:54] I developed selection processes and interviewing processes that were as airtight as I could get them. And when I would take the next assignment to the Presiding Bishopric, if that's what was required to explain why we were going to use that X instead of Y, or why were we going to use Z, who had never done work for the church and didn't have senior members who were tithe paying temple recommend holding companies, but were actually the best company in that location to do the job, why that was the right thing for the church to do.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:32:30] I had heard President Hinckley say in a meeting that we liked hiring our own because whatever we paid them, we were going to get 10% back. Yeah, maybe, but not always. But I was always interested in presenting the reasons why the right company for that particular job was the right company and they should support my decision as opposed to. Because they were also, I know for a fact that the managing director of our department that the members of the Presiding Bishopric that they were being pressured as well by several of these company owners and so forth to use them. Because occasionally the presiding bishop would come back and ask me, why wouldn't you use this person in this location?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:33:22] And my response was always to open up our data that we had on that particular construction project, for example, and why another company was recommended to be, you know, the selected one. And I don't recall one instance when after they had questioned me and said, why aren't you using our good friend xyz, that I ever made a change in those decisions. They respected and trusted me enough during those years that they would support me, even though they were being receiving some pressure from the outside sources.
John Dehlin [01:34:05] Yeah. Beautiful. Well, thanks for answering those questions at the end. I want to ask your opinion about this almost manic temple building that's going on, but let's get back to your story and then we'll come back to that. Is that okay?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:34:17] Yep.
Stepping Down as Stake President and Coming Out
John Dehlin [01:34:17] Okay. So let's talk about. So you stopped being stake president. What year?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:34:23] So the general authorities, as I outline in the memoir, found out that I considered myself to be transgender 12 years ago this month in October of 2012. And I was sitting as stake president at that time.
John Dehlin [01:34:39] Do you want to talk about getting to that point where with your wife at the time, how you came out to her and then how it ended up getting a general authority level knowledge
Laurie Lee Hall [01:34:52] in the first week of 2012? I came out to my former spouse.
John Dehlin [01:34:57] Well, also coming out to yourself. Do you even want to talk about that?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:35:00] Yeah. Okay. We can back up a little further. But that process that I went through in 2011 that I began to allude to earlier, which kind of concluded with my prayer while presenting his glory to God to say, this is me. This is who I am. I believe myself to be transgender and waited on the feeling that I received. And that feeling was a spiritual confirmation that I was on the right track. To put it in simple terms, I then knew that I needed to come out to my former spouse, my spouse at the time, because in our 25 years of marriage, to that point, I had been unwilling to accept that about myself. And it wasn't in my mind, it wasn't an untruth or a lie because I buried it. I thought it wasn't really there, but once I knew it was really There. I didn't want to hide it any longer.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:36:01] Laurie, do you want to share the story of how your former spouse, your spouse at the time found out?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:36:07] Yeah. She found a stash of female clothing that I had tucked back in the closet. And she asked me one evening as I was driving home from work, she called me on the cell phone and said, I found these clothes. Who are they? Started asking me a bunch of questions. I said, wait just a minute. I'll be home in 30 minutes and I'll share it with you. And I had written a letter in advance of that experience prepared to describe exactly how I understood myself to be. I shared that with her.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:36:39] She thought you were having an affair. You get home and you first assumption was that your clothes are all over the bedroom. She's like, are you having an affair?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:36:45] Yeah. This was somehow I was doing something sorted, and I said, no, I'm not having an affair. These are my clothes. And that created confusion.
John Dehlin [01:36:54] So you had been able to hide this from your wife?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:36:56] Yeah, for a long time.
John Dehlin [01:36:58] So how many years in your marriage?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:37:00] 25 years. 25 years, yeah. that point. And so, yes, I said, these are mine. And I printed out the letter, and I handed it to her. I said, read this. Please try to understand what I'm saying here. I knew it was going to be an emotional conversation, so I wanted to make sure some basic facts were at least printed out so that we might gain some understanding as to what was going on.
John Dehlin [01:37:23] And you were stake president at the time, right?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:37:25] I was. And she questioned whether I wanted to be with a man instead of with her. No, that's not the case. So her second thought after I was sexually involved with a woman was, did I want to be sexually involved with a man? It was about sexual orientation. It took some time to eventually help her to understand that gender identity is. And initially her response was, don't you ever dare do this again if you. If you want me to stay with you.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:37:56] Eventually that evolved into being somewhat supportive, although it was always complicated to get further to your earlier question about how did it kind of journey across that year of 2012? In that summer, we finally came out to each of my children, adult children and their spouses, that I was transgender. We did that together. It was a family thing.
Excommunication and Losing Church Employment
Laurie Lee Hall [01:38:25] It greatly upset my oldest son and his wife, and he went back to his home ward to gain some priesthood leader support for the struggle. He was having to find out that his dad was transgender. And he probably said more than he needed to because the bishop discovered that there was a stake president in Tooele, Utah, who was running around and, you know, acting transgender and, you know, maybe dressing in dresses and things like that. And the story got expanded. Bishop freaked out. Bishop called stake president there and got him freaked out. And so stake president there in my son's home area called the Area 70.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:39:12] And the Area 70 got freaked out by, you know, this ever expanding, nasty story, exaggerated, false, exaggerated, false story of. Of what I was doing. And that got ultimately to Elder Whitney Clayton's desk, you know, and he panicked and he was out of town and called one of the 70 who was officed in the church office building, Elder Don Clark at the time, and said, get this person who's a church employee and a stake president into your office and, you know, get the answers. And that was a very uncomfortable interview. It led to many other challenging interviews.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:39:51] Ultimately, the decision was made. I'm skipping past a lot of the detail that's in the memoir. So if you want to know all about this, it's in the book.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:40:00] Maybe we can have you read one passage from this time.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:40:04] Do you have one?
Barbara Jones Brown [01:40:05] It's that story with Dieter Uchtdorf, which is just an incredible story on page 179. So the general authorities become aware that this, their chief architect, lead architect working for the church and a stake president is identifying as transgender. And Barbara, I don't know if you
John Dehlin [01:40:24] know this, but L. Whitney Clayton was behind my excommunication.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:40:26] I do know that, and I do know he was behind Kate Kelly's excommunication as well. Laurie Lee writes how Elder Clayton does. They have interviews, and he does try to learn and understand and ask questions. So he keeps coming back with bearing his testimony that this can't be real.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:40:44] I absolutely bore testimony in every one of these many general authority meetings that I had that I had received a spiritual witness of my gender and that I knew that God knew who I was. And ultimately Elder Clayton and Boyd K. Packer, president of the quorum of the 12, because he has responsibility over stake presidents worldwide, the two of them, most unlikely individuals, presented to the first presidency that this transgender stake president out in Tooele probably should be released and how should that occur? And they decided to do it kind of honorably and not punitively.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:41:24] And this is after Elder Packer had worked. President Packer had worked so closely with you and trusted you to develop his temple in his hometown of Brigham City, Utah.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:41:34] Literally the month after he dedicated the temple we had worked together on, he was taking my name to the First Presidency in the Upper rooms of the Salt Lake Temple to talk about the fact that I was transgender. So if he didn't sense it when we were working together, he knew it. Thirty days later, the same thing happened regarding my employment. The Presiding Bishopric got involved, and they met with the First Presidency as well and talked about whether I should continue at that point as a church employee. The First Presidency's response was, we love the work that Brother hall is doing for us, and we want that to continue.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:42:13] The following Thursday, after both of those conversations had taken place with the First Presidency, was my monthly presentation on temples and temple construction to the First Presidency. So I had a little bit of fear and trepidation walking into that meeting thinking, they now know how I feel about myself. I wasn't presenting as anything but male in my work responsibilities, but I had begun to present androgynously in my spare time.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:42:55] But I just thought, is this going to become a. A difficult situation? Is there going to be an unnecessary exposure of this conversation? And on this matter, in the midst of a meeting where I'm supposedly the voice to the presentations and I'll read what Barbara suggested that I share from the memoir. I stood nervously behind my chair awaiting the arrival of the others. President Diderot Uchtdorf, one of President Monson's two counselors in the First Presidency, soon walked in, also quite early. An immigrant from Germany, he is tall, fit, handsome, with thick silvery hair. He looked directly at me as he entered the doorway, paused momentarily, then effortlessly circled the table to reach me.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:43:46] He extended his right hand to take mine, and instead of shaking it as I expected, pulled me into a tight hug. We are so glad that you are here with us, he said deeply and loudly in his distinct German accent. I melted into his embrace. My nervousness eased in tears. I gently thanked him. I was among friends, so he knew
John Dehlin [01:44:12] how you were starting to transition.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:44:15] He knew I was transgender, and yet that loved who I was. And I felt loved. I felt like in some way I had succeeded in arriving as a transgender person in their employ. Ultimately, about a year later, not quite a year later, I wrote to then Presiding Bishop Gary Stevenson, who's now a member of the Quorum of the twelve, but he was presiding bishop at the time. In our exchange of letters, all of which are included, included in the memoir
John Dehlin [01:44:48] in the appendix, right?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:44:49] In the appendix of the memoir. At least the essential portions of those letters, which are really quite fascinating in and of themselves, worth buying the book for just that exchange. In August of 2013, I wrote to the bishop and said, I do plan to fully transition and live my life as a woman in the context of I hope to be able to be accommodated and continue to serve as an employee of the church. And the assignments that I'd had, I had forgotten that I was that direct in writing that letter. And as I was working on the memoir and pulled all these letters out and started culling through them and so forth, I looked at that, and I thought, good gosh.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:45:33] I actually said that. That directly that long ago, and now I fulfilled it. And I was amazed that. That I had such passion and clarity. In 2013, I still worked as a church employee for another three years, although under probationary watchful eyes. They knew where I was headed. They knew I was headed way in advance of when I got there.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:46:02] And essentially what they told Laurie was that it's okay to have transgender feelings as long as you don't act on them. Sound familiar?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:46:10] Yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:46:11] So it's okay to have transgender feelings. And they were trying to be compassionate and understanding of that, but at the same time saying, but you still. When you come to work, you have to dress as a male. And then eventually, even. What did they tell you you had to do, even at home?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:46:28] Right. So it was more than that. It was explained to me that church employees must live to a much higher standard than general church population. And they levied five particular constraints upon me that applied to my life 24, 7, not just at the office, but in every walk of my life. That I could not wear any article of female clothing. I could not associate with anyone who was transgender. My therapy had to come from only a doctrinally aligned church therapist. I was never to speak of these things at work.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:47:10] The five constraints that were upon me, I told them when they first were given to me that they'd be extremely difficult to do because I'd already proven to myself through trial and error that the things I was doing were specifically designed and consistent with the therapy that I'd been receiving, that. That these were genuine things I could do privately to mitigate my gender dysphoria and continue to function as an employee. By the spring of 2016, I was consistently full time, breaking all five constraints and still working for the church.
John Dehlin [01:47:52] Who gave you those constraints?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:47:54] They were in a letter over the signature of Bishop Stevenson. But I don't believe the letter was written by Bishop Stevenson, because in our conversations, he never really spoke of those things in that manner. But the constraints were clearly, in my mind, the result of human resource information and church legal counsel Curt McConkie, for sure. Curt McConkie I mentioned Lance Wickman in as having been consulted on my situation. Ben Porter, who was the human resources managing director at the time, Bishop Stevenson, really, to me, honestly, felt like he wanted to understand and was compassionate of my situation. But the letter that he, I believe, was required to sign as my department's overseer executive director reflected a very much of a. A church attorney approach to my situation, which lacked the compassion that I felt from the bishop.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:49:03] Yeah. And ultimately, so Laurie says, I want to know if I will be accommodated in transitioning and want to stay as a church employee. Ultimately, her answer comes from her stake president. Maybe. If you want to read a passage from page 219.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:49:20] Sure.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:49:21] So she makes this request, and her boss at work says, I'll get back to you with an answer. And then a couple of days later, she gets a call from her stake president.
John Dehlin [01:49:32] And that's just weird. The mingling of ecclesiastical leadership with occupational matters.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:49:39] Right, right.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:49:40] And the stake president never says, this is because of your request for accommodation. So maybe, Laura, you could talk about
Laurie Lee Hall [01:49:49] that so I can describe it better than reading any particular passage. Maybe that's what I should do. But, yeah. On a Friday morning, I went in and met with my managing director at his request, and present was the director of our human resources in our department. And I was asked specifically, where is this going? Because at that point In August of 2016, I had come out to my ward and stake. I had come out as transgender to the department several months earlier, and I was living full time as Lori Lee, everywhere except work. And everybody knew it.
John Dehlin [01:50:31] Including church or not? Ward.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:50:34] Yep, Ward, everybody. I was attending church as Lori Lee. I was living full time except my mail presentation at the church office building. And my managing director, who was a dear friend of mine, said, where's this going? And I said, well, I expressed the question that I knew that I wanted to ask and have an answer to before I left church office building. And it was, can the church follow the same law that they put in place with the Utah compromise back in March of 15 that protected the employment rights and housing rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender employees? Could they see the moral benefit and the ethical appropriateness of supporting a valuable transgender employee to allow transition to occur without threatening the employment of that person?
John Dehlin [01:51:34] Could they live the law that they helped pass?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:51:36] Exactly. Although they had designed and built in their own loophole, and I had known for that previous year and a half that I was the one falling through that loophole.
John Dehlin [01:51:45] Rules for thee, not for me.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:51:47] Yeah, exactly. Could they close that loophole in my circumstance, as they had repeatedly allowed me to stay functioning as a church employee, even though they knew my circumstances and probably were somewhat aware that I was not keeping all of their constraints and particularly when I came out ultimately to the department, would they allow me to transition? I mean, I knew I had to ask that question before I was excused from my employment.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:52:17] If not for me, for the benefit of others, and to set a witness for future transgender employees going forward. I was promised by my managing director in sincerity that I would receive that answer. I said, I don't want a middle manager.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:52:34] I don't want somebody's opinion on the subject. I want the answer of the Human Resource Committee of the Church, which was the First Presidency Committee. What happened was the following Tuesday, my stake president invited me in and I met with him and my ward bishop was there and he said, I need to cancel your recommend. I need to take your recommend away on that occasion. I said, hold on just a sec. Let's do an interview right now. You and I both have the questions memorized.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:53:05] And Lori, this is such a powerful passage. Maybe you could read it starting with the last paragraph on page 219.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:53:13] Sure. It says, I know I need to push back. Surely this is not your decision alone, I replied, feeling higher. Church authorities were directing him. His calling me in for this meeting just four days after I asked for a decision from the Church Human Resources Committee as to whether I could retain my employment if I socially transitioned could not be a coincidence. The decision is mine alone, he countered. I still didn't believe him. President, we know that holding a temple recommend is based solely upon a person's properly answering the 15 recommend questions. I began. You and I have memorized these questions, so let's review them together. It was a bold approach, but I knew I could back it up.
John Dehlin [01:54:00] Even though it's been in there about gender, I'm telling you now, exactly.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:54:04] Even though it had been three and a half years since I had administered a recommended interview, I conducted hundreds of them in my lifetime and received quite a few myself. I knew that if I recited and then answered each of these 15 prescribed questions as if I were conducting my own interview, I could determine the meeting's outcome. And so I went ahead through the entire interview stating the questions and then stating at that time my commitment to those answers. And he concluded by kind of leaning back in his chair, which used to be my chair, and said, there's no reason to take Utempa right them in a way.
John Dehlin [01:54:44] And for those who don't know these Are questions like, do you believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in his son Jesus Christ? Do you believe in the restoration? Do you believe the current president? You know, leaders of the church are sustained of God?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:54:55] Just faith questions, faith related questions, behavioral related questions.
John Dehlin [01:55:00] To drink coffee, do you drink tea?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:55:01] Do you drink circle home church teachings?
John Dehlin [01:55:03] Do you live the law of chastity? Do you pay your tithing?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:55:05] Exactly. And I enumerate all of those in the book as they exist in. In 2016, he said there was no reason to take my recommend away. And so in his mind, he was thinking whatever direction he'd received over the weekend to take my recommend away. He was thinking, there's no reason to do this.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:55:24] But then you're called back in. And then 48 hours later, so I'm called back in.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:55:28] And it was, you know, it was Groundhog Day. It was deja vu. He started the meeting by saying, I need to take your recommend away. Keep in mind that at this point, I'm full time Lori Lee outside of church office buildings. So I'm sitting in this meeting with him, presenting in a blouse and a skirt and presenting as Lori Lee. He said, I'm taking your recommend away. And at that point, I knew that he was being puppeted. He was being directed in what he was to do and had been required to do this regardless of his opinion, perhaps with the threat of his own calling and standing in the church, that he needed to do this.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:56:16] Because if you don't have a temple recommend, you cannot work for the LDS Church to be a church employee, you have to have a temple recommend. If you lose it, you can be fired.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:56:25] Exactly. And so I did not.
John Dehlin [01:56:28] And then you're not fired for being transgender, you're fired for not having temple,
Laurie Lee Hall [01:56:32] for not having current temple recommendations, and for ecclesiastical reasons. So instead of. And of course, the recommend was removed that night. And knowing that I could be fired the next morning because the word would have gotten back that I'd lost my recommend, I actually submitted my letter of intent to retire, kind of safeguarding the fact that I'd been an employee for 20 years and I was now 55, safeguarding whatever, you know, limited benefits retirement might offer me. But yes, instead of answering the human resource employment law question that I asked, I was disqualified ecclesiastically from being able to work as a church employee, which was a condition that they knew that the church knew that they had strong legal precedent for having gone through such cases in the early 90s demonstrating that the church could use the temple recommend as a basis for church employment and that they were in good standing for doing so.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:57:42] So, yeah, that was how it went down. I retired and began from that moment on, from the day I left the church office building to live 247 my authentic life is Laura Lee, thank you for sharing that.
The Experience of Excommunication
John Dehlin [01:57:57] Would, would you feel comfortable just describing what the excommunication was like for you and you know, maybe, yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [01:58:06] Talk about, like, why. So at that point, you only use your lose your temple recommend, but you're still a member, you're still attending church every week. You, you want to keep participating in church. What was it that later leads to. To losing your membership in the church?
Laurie Lee Hall [01:58:21] So it was a complicated time. And one of the things that Barbara, as a historian and my editor, helped to contribute to my book is, and from information, primary sources that I had was this underlying challenge that was facing the church in 2015 through 2017 regarding the church's belief in the gender binary and just how complex it was becoming for them to try to hold on to the notion that it's a core church doctrine, that it's male and female only and nothing else, and no slipping from one side to the other.
Laurie Lee Hall [01:59:05] All of that was going on while I was trying to exert myself as a transgender employee and a transgender member of the church. So that interesting history gets woven into my story at this point. And I guess if I wanted to survive as a church member, I was really stepping into the deep end of the doo doo at that time as far as the church was concerned, because the church had begun teaching general authorities, area authorities, and and ultimately stake presidents to take back to their units that they were not to allow self determination of gender identity to occur. The church could not be complicit in permitting individuals to transition socially or to begin attending classes that aligned or activities that aligned with their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex at birth.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:00:08] And on one occasion, I actually did attend a few minutes of a Relief Society meeting, as I described in the memoir, and it caused a firestorm. And I was informed at that time that maybe a church disciplinary council would be necessary to prevent me from ever stepping out of line in that fashion, which supposedly, I guess in hindsight could have reflected poorly on the church or weakened the church's argument that they didn't support self determination of gender identity.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:00:43] A few weeks later, I was called to meet with the stake president again. In that case, my former spouse was invited to come as well. Stake president recited to me what he had been told, which was I was required to detransition and live as male or write a letter and resign my membership from the church.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:01:05] And that caught me quite off guard because as a priesthood leader, I had never been told or ever even entered my mind that I would ever ask anybody to resign their membership in the church. I told the president at that time that there was no feasible healthy medically or mental health wise way that I could detransition live as male again. That was a horrifying location that I just couldn't return to.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:01:38] And I said, it's not in my heart to resign my membership in the church. And he said, so we'll proceed and hold the disciplinary council on your behalf. And then he turned and looked at my spouse and said, if you remain with him, we may discipline you as well for living in what appears to be a same sex marriage.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:02:04] And, you know, and you know, my circuits all go poof, because at the same time, in the same breath, he's saying, we're going to consider excommunicating you for being, in their view, a man living as a woman, that they might threaten her with discipline because she's a woman apparently living with a woman.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:02:28] So at the same time, he is failing to acknowledge your true gender identity as Lori Lee, saying, no, you are male. He's threatening your spouse. Your wife at the time was saying, but if you stay married to Brother hall, you could face discipline for being in a same sex marriage with a woman.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:02:49] Yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:02:49] Just the irony is.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:02:51] Well, obviously what he was trying to do was to compel me by threatening her to detransition and live as the other kid.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:02:59] Maybe she could try to convince you.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:03:02] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:03:02] Or whatever.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:03:03] That I might for some reason decide that, hey, I'm gonna bow to this peer pressure or whatever it was at that point. I knew that when the disciplinary council was ultimately held that I would be excommunicated. So. So obviously they wanted me out of the church. If an option for them was to write a letter and resign simply for
Barbara Jones Brown [02:03:27] transitioning, you're still living all of the commandments of the church. You're able to answer all the temple
Laurie Lee Hall [02:03:33] recommend questions as honestly as I could at that time. Sure. There was no reason for disciplinary council to occur. Not surprisingly, I was able to learn from other transgender members in my situation that they were being told word for word the exact same threatening.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:03:57] Detransition. Yeah, detransition.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:04:01] Live as male or resign. And then the cisgender spouse being told, if you stay together, you're going to receive discipline as well. Those very same lines were used with friends of mine in different parts of the country within weeks of me receiving them. Clearly an orchestrated effort on the part of church headquarters to purge this burgeoning group of transgender individuals that were visible in church activity. So the disciplinary council came. I was not surprised by its outcome, but I describe it in detail in two chapters in the memoir, where it was filled with irony and just surprising experiences, where it was clear that it was being driven from above. But it was also clear to me that there were many around the table in the high council room who weren't comfortable with what they were being asked to participate in.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:05:11] Well, these were your friends and neighbors. You had called them when you were stake president and set them apart in the callings they're currently setting in. The stake president who's conducting this disciplinary council had been your counselor in the stake presidency before.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:05:25] All folks that knew me well, and I knew them well, they knew my situation. I attended the disciplinary council so that I might one last time share my feelings and testimony, my lived experience. My spouse attended to be able to defend her circumstances, that she was not living in a same sex relationship in her experience.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:05:53] It was unfortunate that it had to happen. It didn't have to occur. But I think at that moment I was visible enough of an individual in the church that they needed to distance themselves from me as having been a church leader and, and a senior church employee, someone who was visible and in social media and so forth, exerting some influence in trying to help others walk the path of being a transgender person in Mormonism in other high demand religions.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:06:31] Although I was not doing anything aggressively contrary to the church or against church leaders, I didn't speak against them. I don't think I've been unkind to the church at any point in this process or in even the things that I describe in the book.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:06:50] I think it's as balanced and deferential as it can be. But I was excommunicated. And by the time John, you and I first talked together, it was only a few weeks after that event and I was very much still processing what had happened, even though I understood why it had happened to some degree. And I knew that I was on a pathway that was going to lead to my authenticity and ultimately what I hoped to be a happy, thriving life.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:07:20] It was still really, really hard to have gone through those changes of loss of employment and loss of church membership, and shortly after that, loss of family and marriage, you know, in such a short period of time that it was a lot to be processing. I thought I was getting through it okay. And so forth. But it took a lot longer to process than I imagined.
John Dehlin [02:07:44] Yeah, I'll just restate the name of the book, just as a pause point again. The book is Dictates of Conscience from Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman. Lori Lee hall published my signature books. Please buy it, please share it.
John Dehlin [02:08:01] We, you know, the book talks about your relationship with your ex wife and the divorce. We won't, maybe we won't cover that here as much, but we will refer people to the book to get the full story there, if that's okay. Barbara, you know what struck me when we did our interview was that you seemed to, and you struck me as still a very orthodox believer at the time we met and did the interview, which was heartbreaking to me.
Life After Divorce and Choosing to Stay Involved
John Dehlin [02:08:30] So let's talk about your life after the divorce and your determination, as you say in the book, to remain on the bus, to continue riding the bus, I think, as you frame it, and how your life is proceeded in terms of companionship and then what has happened to your commitment to staying in the church. And then we can even talk about your evolving beliefs if you want.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:09:01] Sure, sure. In the months that followed our first interview together, I was still very much interested in showing up and finding a place where I could show up and be as active as a non member could be. And I describe in a chapter in the memoir my lovely experiences when I found a ward not too far from where I lived, but to which I didn't pertain as far as boundaries were concerned, where I was welcome for exactly who I am. I was welcome in Relief Society. I was given assignments to serve and as close to receiving callings as I could without being sustained over the pulpit. It was just for several months was just an absolutely delightful experience in the church.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:09:56] I do love this chapter and I'm glad you included it, Laurie, because it shows it how it can be, how it should be, just how we as individuals can accept and love people no matter who they are and welcome them and include them. And so I love this chapter as an example of what it can look like, what it did look like in one particular ward for Laurie Lee and Lori Lee. Maybe you could read the passage on page 270 that begins one Sunday, Jonah nights.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:10:28] Yeah. This was just an example of how normalizing it was for me to be in this ward.
John Dehlin [02:10:36] Is this why you were still in. Is it the Liberty Ward?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:10:38] The Liberty Ward in Salt Lake Liberty Stake, yeah. And how symbolic this was. Like Barbara describes how it could be,
Barbara Jones Brown [02:10:50] how it was in this case, how
Laurie Lee Hall [02:10:52] it Actually was in this case is how it could be everywhere. One Sunday, Joan and I sat near the chapel center during sacrament meeting. In front of us was the bishop's wife, Sister Gustafson, struggling to manage three young children while balancing her fourth, a four month old baby, on her leg. Bishop Gustafson could only watch his wife scuffle from the rostrum where church protocol requires bishops to sit while presiding over church meetings. I was surprised but thrilled by what Sister Gustafson did next. Needing help, she turned around to her left and handed her baby into my arms.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:11:34] She could have turned to her right and given her child to Joan, the Relief Society president, but instead she gave her baby to me while everyone in the ward watched. Delighted, I kept the baby entertained for the remainder of the meeting. I never asked her about it, but I believe that she, a leader and the bishop's wife, wanted to show the ward by example that I was worthy of trust and acceptance in the community. And that's precisely what happened in my Liberty ward.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:12:06] This is even more poignant as we consider, like we might in the next few minutes, the way that current church policy tends to villainize transgender members as somehow being a clear and present danger to others. How much of a contrast it is that the bishop's wife handed her little baby into my arms for everyone to see that clearly transgender individuals in this case are not a clear and present danger, even to our little ones.
John Dehlin [02:12:37] Yeah, yeah, that was beautiful. That was a beautiful part of the book. And it's just, it's so bizarre to reflect on the. I've heard my. A late friend of mine once said that the Mormon, in his view, the Mormon Church is true from the ward down. You know, Barbara, you're nodding and we're not saying that's true or not true, but that's a perspective.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:13:01] What Lori Lee's experience shows, and we had this conversation several times, was that the generally at the ward level, I mean, with exceptions, of course, but particularly with women at the ward level, women tended to be very accepting, very loving of Lori and welcoming to Laurie. So at the ward level, she did find that it was the higher up someone might be as a church leader, with exceptions of course, but then that's where it seems to be coming from top down. The anti transgender feeling is a top down thing rather than from the bottom up. So again, that's why we loved including this chapter is it just shows how local ward members are ready, I believe, and ready to be accepting and want to be and want to be accepting. We're Blessed because of your involvement in the ward.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:13:52] Right. I had several Relief Society sisters in different wards throw their arms around me. I know members of other wards that, prior to the recent policy changes, were totally accepted by the women of their ward as sisters in their home units.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:14:12] And you also had two wonderful bishops as well. This bishop that you just wrote about here and. And then also the bishop of the ward when you were excommunicated, incredibly supportive of you through all of that. So again, it just shows how people at the local level.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:14:29] So somehow it's not true at the stake president level and above.
John Dehlin [02:14:32] Yeah. I had this realization when I was always inoculating our children to sort of Mormon judgments of, like, people who smoke or people who are gay. I realized bigotry has. Has to be taught. Children get it just naturally in terms of just loving everyone and accepting everyone and not judging anyone. This bigotry thing we kind of have to teach from the top down.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:14:56] Of course, of course. But it's always been fascinating, and the book illustrates it. Just to reiterate what Barbara said, that the willingness of women to accept who I was and be welcome as a part of their sisterhood without reservation, without clarity, you know, without anything that would, you know, say, yeah, we'll accept you, but we always know that you're queer and different or whatever it was. There were no disclaimers. It was just unconditional love happened over and over again.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:15:32] And then there's also one other example of someone who's so accepting and affirming of you, and that's Richard Heaton of the provost.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:15:41] Yeah, there's a few rare exceptions, and I note them in my story that, you know, a couple of bishops and this good man, Richard Heaton, that I interface with in my church employment, who was the director of the Provo Missionary Training center when the expansion project took place, who. Who has been continually supportive of me through my transition and even allowed me, encouraged me, invited me, wanted me to walk through with other church authorities, the new MTC, just 48 hours after I was excommunicated, and frequently introduced me on that tour as Sister Lori Lee hall, the chief architect for the expansion of the Missionary Training Center. It was just beautiful to be accepted that way. And so there were rare exceptions where churchmen in authority were very loving and supportive of me, but they were the exception for the most part, in that case.
John Dehlin [02:16:48] Well, maybe tell us just quickly about finding.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:16:53] Yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:16:55] Because of Mormon stories.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:16:58] There's a lovely chapter in the book which I entitled Love is Love, that describes how, because of our first interview together. John My story being told and then seen several years after it first aired by I'll mention her name is Nancy and she was part of a family. She's here with us in studio.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:17:27] She was part of a family that I knew decades before when I was first a church member. And she pushed the like button on my background picture on my Facebook post on my Facebook site after she had watched the Mormon Stories interview.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:17:47] And I found this all out. It kind of unraveled as I reached out to her and started talking to her through messenger that first night that I saw her name on a like she had been referred to by another family member who knew me long ago. You've got to see this interview. So and so me is on Mormon Stories and has come out as transgender and ha ha hee, he, you know, mocking a little bit the experience.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:18:17] And Nancy, bless her heart, she sat down and started watching it and just loved what she saw in me. As I explained my story at that time and felt pained at what the church had done to me and just saw the goodness that came out in that, in that experience. And she shared all that with me. And she also shared with me that her husband had just received information that he was terminally ill and had about two to three months left to live.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:18:56] And I connected with Nancy over that, knowing that she needed support from, in this case, a long distance because I lived in South Salt Lake and she lived outside of Louisville, Kentucky, I offered to be her virtual visiting teacher because I was always looking for clever ways to serve others as a non member and an unaccepted person in the church.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:19:20] And I think that affected her for good. She describes that eventually we came together in the circumstances of her husband's passing and ultimately in some of the things that occurred. Whereas she didn't want to live alone. And I discovered after my divorce that I did not like living alone either and felt uncomfortable and unsafe. In that circumstance, we decided to pool our resources and move in. I'd move from Salt Lake to Louisville and start sharing our lives together. And that over a short period of time blossomed into deep love for each other. As we describe, we both have something of a relationship desire for that deep bonding relationship, not attraction, but, you know, but for bonding.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:20:21] And when we have become such a great fit and support and love for each other, it's just been it's part of living joyfully authentic is to finally find someone who sees you for who you are and loves you for exactly who you are.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:20:40] And in that circumstance was I able to really finally heal from the trauma that I'd experienced growing up. Up and trying to live inauthentically and ultimately coming out and following that journey and being able to describe that journey, all because someone was patient enough to get to know me and to love me. So, you know, kudos to John and Mormon stories for allowing that story to be told.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:21:08] Is this the first time you're aware of John, that Mormon stories brought a couple together? I don't know. I don't know. Or has it happened before?
John Dehlin [02:21:13] It has happened.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:21:14] Does it happen a lot?
John Dehlin [02:21:15] It's happened a few times.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:21:17] That's fantastic.
John Dehlin [02:21:18] It makes me really happy to hear. And just even more importantly, I just love stories of hope. You know, there are all sorts of people in this world that feel alone. I think loneliness is kind of a modern scourge. And I just love to hear any story of love, of hope, about love. And that's a beautiful part of this book that we're not in any way going to do justice for. But that's another reason to buy the book, to read the full love story
Laurie Lee Hall [02:21:46] with you and Nancy, because again, my hope is that this is a hopeful book about a hopeful, successful journey to thriving and to living a full and authentic life. And love and partnership and acceptance is such a big part of that.
John Dehlin [02:22:02] Yeah, yeah.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:22:04] I love that it has a happy ending.
John Dehlin [02:22:06] Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk quickly, just briefly, about your faith evolution, if you're comfortable, because the book does talk about that a little bit. I just wondered, not understanding the complexities of faith myself at times, I've just often wondered, how could any person of color ever be a believing Latter Day Saint? How could a gay or lesbian person even want to remain a member? And I thought the same thing when you, after our interview, seemed so committed to remain faithful to attend. Like, that just feels like torture. That just feels like self. I don't want to say abuse, but like, anyway, talk about your own spiritual evolution and as it relates to your relationship with the church.
Faith Transition and Leaving the Church Behind
Laurie Lee Hall [02:22:58] Right. So I do demonstrate that for quite a season after the excommunication, I wanted to be there because I wanted to be able, as we kind of alluded to earlier, to claim my seat on the bus, if you will, like a Rosa park, if you will. And to set an example and be in the faith community as the kind of transgender Latter Day Saint or Latter Day adjacent Latter Day Saint who could take a baby in my arms safely and maybe allow other trans folk, especially youth, to come up and see somebody who was safe and was making it work. And so that was a big part of my wanting to be a part of the community.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:23:43] And you identify as Esther of the Old Testament, that saves her people, helps her people, goes before the king and saves her people.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:23:52] She's pretty passionate about that for as long as it was possible and not toxic or dangerous to me, which it has eventually become. I think I even shared in that original interview with you, John, that for my life, even prior to the excommunication, the church functioned in my life as a vehicle to grow closer to God and to gain my experience and understanding of spiritual things.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:24:23] Having been a convert to the church, my thought process says to me that I didn't grow up with this strong reliance upon the organized religion, the actual institution of the church. If I bore testimony, I wasn't ever bearing testimony to the truthfulness of the church. My focus was not the institution. My focus was always my relationship with God.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:24:54] And I mention in the book that when the excommunication took place, that was an administrative action on their part that did nothing to draw me away from the love of God. God wasn't in the excommunication, and I truly believed that.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:25:11] And so I moved on. As I began my journey in Kentucky and my healing and considering these things more carefully, truth claims of the church aside, all of which I understand much better now than when we last spoke. But what was important for me was my ongoing relationship with deity and my faith in, but not the knowledge and certainty that I'd experienced as a church member. I've described that. That if anything, I've moved from what I felt was certainty to a place where I live. Hopefully.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:25:56] I have hope that certain things are right and true or that will ultimately transpire. I have confidence that. I have confidence that there is a higher power, that there is. There is something beyond us, beyond this life. I have great confidence and hope that those things exist and are real.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:26:28] I'm uninterested in defining those things in detail myself. And I also recognize that religion today and even in past eras are men's best explanations for the kinds of things that I feel that I suspect that others felt. And they try to define them and put them into boxes so that they can help others to understand them and feel them, or for other nefarious reasons, that religion might exist.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:27:05] Ultimately, I live in a very kind of a universal, hopeful place that seems to satisfy my soul quite well. The spiritual influence that I relate to, using Mormonism's terms, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the ongoing companionship of the Holy Spirit. I still feel to this day in great strength, because I feel like I developed that relationship and it wasn't removed, moved by the actions of the disciplinary council, but was something that I gained through experience and continue to use and listen to and appreciate in my walk of my life.
John Dehlin [02:27:49] Nowadays, after being so committed to the church, high levels of leadership and working at the highest levels with the framework that this is the one true church with exclusive authority, and even the temple ordinances are required for salvation. I'm sure you had as orthodox of a testimony as they come. Has it been difficult in your process to lose that certainty, to lose that framework, because that's how your entire kind of spiritual worldview was constructed? Has it been difficult to lose that? I know you haven't lost all of it, but the exclusive, true Mormon parts of it, you know.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:28:31] Yeah. I think about temple covenants, for example, again, from that frame of view of. That was a vehicle to bring me to a point of understanding of certain things in terms of the nature of God and the nature of their relationship with ourselves.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:28:51] I've never worried about the fact that supposedly all my covenants and ordinances were canceled, because I really feel like I didn't make those covenants in the temple with the church. I made them in the presence of God and angels and so forth, and I made them between me and the Lord, not with the church, in my opinion.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:29:15] And as they've moved on in their direction and I and mine, I'm respectful of what I learned. I'm respectful of covenants I may have made and try to live with integrity towards the things that I feel are right and good from the past without unduly struggling about the fact that anything might be lost.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:29:42] Because I don't think things that I have are things that could be taken by a tribunal of men in an institution. And so I don't mourn that loss. I mourn the loss of the association of good people that I worked with and served with for years.
The Church's Policies Toward Transgender Members
Laurie Lee Hall [02:30:04] I'm sad, very sad for how the church is choosing to treat its transgender members now. And I'm really concerned about young people growing up in the church today with feelings of gender dysphoria or desires to express themselves in any way that varies from the. For the strength of youth, standard appearance, and behavioral guidelines.
John Dehlin [02:30:36] Do you want to talk about that? About, you know, just a few. A month or two ago, the church changed its policies with regard to transgender people, and not in a positive way. And you're. You have a. The book.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:30:48] You.
John Dehlin [02:30:49] You actually, as the book was going to print The. The. The Mormon Church made these changes, I believe, in August of 2024. And so you have a. Afterward where you talk. Do you want to talk about those changes and how you feel about them?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:31:01] Yeah, absolutely. The. The context for ourselves in writing the book was that we were literally putting the capstone on our editing and were ready to go to print when on August 19, the church dropped online these new restrictions towards transgender members who had, using their terminology, quote unquote, transitioned away from their biological sex at birth.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:31:32] And that phrase is reiterated over and over again and relates to a teaching that President Dallin Oaks has put in place as of October of 2019, that gender, as far as the church is concerned, which is supposedly an inherent quality or characteristic of our eternal identity, actually means biological sex at birth.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:31:57] So anyone who now in the church who transitions away for any reason from their biological sex at birth requires First Presidency approval to be baptized, cannot attend the temple or hold priesthood which had been in place prior to this time, but also cannot any longer teach in any classroom setting in the church, cannot work with or serve children or youth in the church. And this is where we get into what I referred to earlier.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:32:36] In contrast to holding that little baby in the Liberty Ward, this new set of policy restrictions villainizes and dehumanizes transgender Latter Day Saints. Saints as a danger.
John Dehlin [02:32:50] To summarize some of the worst changes they made just so people get a sense.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:32:54] Right.
John Dehlin [02:32:54] So how humiliating. Dehumanizing there.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:32:57] Yeah, it's humiliating to not be able to associate with children and youth.
John Dehlin [02:33:04] So a trans. No longer. What can a transgender person not do in the Mormon Church?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:33:09] Can't teach, can't hold any calling associated or interfacing with. With children or youth. All transgender individuals, anyone who has transitioned away from their biological sex at birth, and this would particularly affect youth and young single adults. If there's an overnight activity, those people are required to be escorted away from the overnight activity, which is terribly dehumanizing and targeting. We're not allowed to use the restroom. That aligns with our presentation of gender. We could go in, for example, I could go into a men's restroom in a Latter Day Saint church and hike up my skirt and attempt to use a urinal. And that would be uncomfortable.
John Dehlin [02:34:01] But allowed. But allowed in this new policy.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:34:04] In this new policy,
John Dehlin [02:34:07] you could dress as a woman, go to church, and go into the men's restroom and use the men's stall in a skirt. But you can't. What?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:34:17] But I can't go into the women's restroom unless a trusted Leader clears out the restroom and then stands guard at the door. What does that say about what I'm going to do behind that door in that women's restroom? You know, again, signaling that somehow transgender people are a clear and present danger to others. Our records will be annotated so that from now on all future church leaders will know that this is a person to not be trusted and to be restricted. In the same way that those who commit sexual abuse or steal from the church other grievous sins, like a sexual offender's list, the transgender members record is noted so that. Annotated so that forever it will follow
John Dehlin [02:35:12] us around along with child abusers and thieves.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:35:16] Exactly. Extortionists and so forth. It's.
John Dehlin [02:35:20] Did we mention the overnight thing?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:35:22] Yes, I did.
John Dehlin [02:35:23] Okay. Yeah.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:35:24] And it leaves, it leaves no latitude for a local leader to exercise any discernment or discretion towards the treatment of the transgender member. Whereas prior to last August, there was enough flexibility built into the church handbook that a local bishop could. And my experience from many of my friends who were active in their relief societies, attending activities, serving in callings because their local leaders knew and loved them much like we said, church is true from the ward level down, those people were all being able to participate and enjoyed at least a portion of the benefits of attending church and having social experiences with their Latter Day Saint family.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:36:17] I'm aware of some who have, who had deep and long lasting experiences in the church who have now resigned their membership simply because there is no latitude for them to participate anymore. And their bishops grieve because they are not provided with any space to be able to work with their members.
John Dehlin [02:36:39] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't even think the top Mormon church leaders even have taken the time to think through the complexities because you can have a genetic, you know, an XY male that if they have the right intersex symptomology, doesn't even know that they're chromosomally male because the way that they developed in terms of anatomically is that they, they think they're female genetically when their body parts present as female and their gender presentation is female. But until they do a genetic test and find out they're infertile or whatever, they, you know, they won't even know. But according to the rules, that woman who passes and that that genetic man who gender wise identifies as a woman. Right. Once it's discovered that, that their biological sex is male according to the rules, they would what need to detransition, according to the church's perspective, start Dressing as
Laurie Lee Hall [02:37:52] a man, somehow try to live as
John Dehlin [02:37:54] a male or start going to the men's restroom, presenting as a. Into all appearances, looking completely like a female. Like, it makes no sense.
Barbara Jones Brown [02:38:05] Right.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:38:05] It's extreme, extremely difficult.
John Dehlin [02:38:08] There's no allowance for that. I guess First Presidency. I guess that's always the fallback First Presidency approval. I don't know.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:38:16] It's not written that way. As far as the activity and participation restrictions, there is no leeway. The door's been slammed shut, the bolt has been thrown and the tape's been put on the door. And I share in the afterword that we wrote once this had come out and was digested, that my real fear is for the youth who are learning to work within their latter day Saint identity, who are also trying to sort out their feelings about themselves and where they stand. We witness that a lot of our youth who may never ultimately express as transgender or gender variant, often explore styles that are gender variant.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:39:13] And my fear is that in a judgmental surveillance circumstance created by this new policy, that even youth that aren't experiencing gender dysphoria, but are just expressing themselves differently from, you know, the narrow band of what the for the strength of youth suggests their presentation should be, that they're going to be singled out and targeted by members who are trying to somehow purge any gender variance from their units. And the number of people and individuals and families and tender souls like our youth who are affected by this is well beyond those who intentionally transitioned away from their biological sex at birth.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:40:02] And I think that is an enormously harmful circumstance the church has inadvertently created, because in the rising generation, there's a lot of gender fluidity in terms of presentation and experience. A whole generation who begins to challenge the strict gender binary and the conditions that became a part of our Western culture decades and even centuries ago.
John Dehlin [02:40:40] Yeah, it's really disheartening. And if you were to think about why the church made these changes, you know, to me, it almost seems like they just don't want to deal with this issue and they want to make policies so offensive that just transgender people just won't even feel welcome and won't even want to come. Now, that's my interpretation.
John Dehlin [02:41:06] It certainly doesn't feel Christlike or evidence based or science based, you know, in any way. It feels contradictory as someone who has a Ph.D. in, in clinical counseling psychology, who understands that the medical profession should lead because this is a matter of life and death. It's a medical issue. It's not some social issue that's just based on people's whims and, you know, just superficial sort of matters. Not even spiritual matters, it's medical matters. It just makes me feel like the Mormon Church just wants to rid itself of the problem by making transgender people feel so unwelcome that they will just leave and not show up. But what do you think?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:41:54] Yeah, if that was not their intention, it's certainly been the result from everyone I've spoken to since, including parents of gender variant kids, my own friends who were active in the church, who, who transitioned. As I have, I mention that harkening back to the science based evidence and the recommended steps that an individual who experiences gender dysphoria like myself that are recommended to be taken include social and legal and ultimately medical and perhaps surgical transition for adults, that those things are necessary for individuals like myself to not only survive going forward, but to thrive. And the church has said, no, if you do these things that you need to do, you're not welcome amongst us.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:42:56] I think if that wasn't their intention, it's absolutely the result. It feels to me, and I draw the comparison, that prior to 1978, it made church members feel far more comfortable if they continued to have a policy in place that excluded those of African American ancestry. And so we see a priesthood ban that prevents African Americans and African descent in other countries to be able to hold the priesthood or attend the temple. So. So in a huge manner that greatly reduced the participation of black members of the LDS Church to basically, I think, allow the comfort of the white cisgender heterosexual members to feel comfortable in a homogenous setting.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:44:01] Same thing with the policy of exclusion that we've mentioned in 2015. We can't allow these same sex marriages that are now legal to, you know, to sully our chapels. So we're going to do something that makes that so onerous that we're going to force them to not want to participate and we're going to use, we're going to weaponize their children's progress as a way of, of making sure that they don't show up in our chapels. Now the boogeyman is the transgender person. Gender variance is apparently so unsettling to certain leaders of the church that we're excluded. And I said this in the afterword, I don't care if it's minority racial exclusions or minority sexual orientation exclusions or minority gender identity exclusions.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:45:00] These exclusions represent discrimination on the part of the church and they're going to find themselves in time on the wrong side of history on this one as well. That at the individual and ward level of the church, members are accepting of individuals with gender variance and transgender folk who have transitioned away from their biological sex at birth. More and more members are aware of this because it's becoming more commonplace in society. And although in certain places, in political arguments and in legislatures in certain states and so forth, there's a lot of anti trans rhetoric that's being weaponized against us for political purposes, the church seems to have stepped right into that same role and weaponized participation in its classes and activities as a way to make us just plain go away to create transgender erasure at the church level.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:46:04] In a similar fashion that certain states are attempting to erase the transgender experience from the legal definitions of their laws, we're seeing that on a growing basis. Some 24 states of the 50 in the United States are enacting particularly onerous anti transgender legislation, whereas other states are opening themselves up as transgender sanctuary places where you can go and receive health care without being threatened, where your doctor can prescribe for you without being threatened regarding their license or their livelihood.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:46:53] It's a very polarized situation that I don't know why the Church of Jesus Christ would want to step into those same circles when there's so much harm being done to individuals who, like myself, simply want to live authentically and quietly and go about our lives as we feel, you know, with our own self determination and discretion about how we live that our bodily autonomy to make decisions about who we are and how we present and how we are as biological individuals, that, you know, that these things are overruled by church and state.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:47:41] It's a dangerous time that we live in in that way. And the church isn't making it any easier. The church could be a more welcoming and sanctuary location, but it's not.
John Dehlin [02:47:55] Yeah, yeah. Like I often think about Christ's admonition to leave the 99 to go after the 1. And it just seems like the, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has this long track record over, you know, whether it's, you know, members of African descent and the, you know, the priesthood and the temple exclusion policies for 150 years that we've covered so much in this new amazing book, Second Class Saints. Whether it's the Equal Rights Amendment of the 70s and 80s, whether it's same sex marriage. There are just so many issues where the LDS Church, instead of being prophetic, instead of being ahead of the times, the LDS Church just time and time again seems to find itself on the wrong side of history, not on the side of love and compassion, not on the side of the defending the rights of the one, but always on the wrong side of history, opposing human rights and civil rights.
John Dehlin [02:49:04] And it's so disheartening to see it continue to happen. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. And sometimes it's just way too long. But the other thing I'll just say is that, you know, we're committed to not making this a partisan issue. It's a political season. It's very controversial time right now. And I was so disheartened three or four years ago to see that this issue of transgender, you know, individuals was going to become weaponized as a political issue.
John Dehlin [02:49:51] And I just hate seeing that. I hate seeing when vulnerable populations are politicized in a way to where if you're one party or another, you sort of have to pick a side. And whether it's women's rights or medical rights or human rights, that should not be something that one party or the other, the country gets split, and one party or the other is either for or against, especially when it's a matter of life and death. So is it okay if I just ask you a few questions about common concerns that people have and just you can give your best response, just briefly, to some of these concerns that people have in terms of fearing what happens if we become more affirming and supportive of transgender individuals?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:50:46] Is that okay?
Barbara Jones Brown [02:50:46] Sure.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:50:46] Let's try that.
John Dehlin [02:50:47] Okay. So, you know, one issue would be, you know, it's always bathrooms. You know, we don't want, you know, quote, men going into women's bathrooms or women going into men's bathrooms. There's an issue of safety that is sometimes assumed or sometimes floated as concern. What would you say to sort of help people stop getting tripped up on that issue of bathrooms?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:51:15] There's really no evidence of this kind of a problem ever occurring. It's easy to create it as a boogeyman issue. But in my experience these past seven years, living authentically as I move around and use public restrooms, for example, in various different states, some of which are not affirming, I just go into the stall, I do my business, I wash my hands, I greet someone kindly, and I move on. And the fear that's being described, it's just not real. It. That doesn't exist, and it's. The fact that it's perpetuated is cruel and it's wrong.
John Dehlin [02:52:07] Yeah. I recently was at an airport that had a bathroom that wasn't gender specific. People identifying as Male or female or as non binary would just go to their stall, do their business. People presenting as men and women were coming in and out. It was just not a thing. And it felt so modern and so normal.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:52:31] You know what I mean? I've been in such places, particularly in Europe. There are some countries where that's the norm now. And there's a couple of adjustments that I would make as an architect to make that feel completely safe to someone in America. But, yeah, there's. There's really. It's just taboo that gets created that somehow we're going to do something to somebody in a public restroom. That's not going to happen.
John Dehlin [02:52:59] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How about, you know, the other one is. Another one is high school athletics that. Oh, we'll have, you know, people assigned female at birth will, you know, be trying to compete in men's sports, and they could get harmed. Or people assigned male at birth will start competing in women's athletics, and they'll make it unfair. What are your thoughts about that?
Laurie Lee Hall [02:53:27] It's been my opinion for a long time that should an individual in middle school age or high school age begin to receive transgender health care, which, of course, isn't available in about 24 of our states right now, but if an individual is being treated with puberty blockers and so forth, I'm thinking in this case about an individual who is assigned male at birth and is entering into, you know, the pubescent years, as I recall, I was. If there's puberty blockers involved, if there's things that.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:54:07] That occur over a period of time, there's really no reason to be afraid of a transgender girl who's been receiving gender affirming health care, participating in her high school sports with other females, because there is no significant advantage. Typically.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:54:32] I've seen some things over the summer when the Olympics took place that, you know, that showed some of the. Some of the women's basketball teams, and there were a whole group of women who were well over 6ft tall, and there was another team that was fielding a full force of, you know, individuals who were, you know, well under 6ft tall, and they're all cisgender individuals.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:54:59] Is that an unfair advantage? Biologically, we're different somehow as humans, but I think reasonable rules can. Can be put in place which determine at the high school and middle school level to what a point an individual has transitioned sufficiently and has had enough care, provided that they don't have any advantage over their peers in their target gender.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:55:31] I think that there's been attempts in Some places to allow that to occur. I think it was unfortunate this year at the Olympics that the boxer from Morocco, who was a cisgender woman, was singled out as having some unfair physical advantage, when in reality there was nothing of the sort. But because it became a discussion point in this hotbed of strong feelings about gender that she was villainized, you know, for just looking like she might have been male at birth when that wasn't the case at all. You know, it's just, it demonstrates how frequently this happens. I know in. I recall the story in Utah where not long after its sports bans went in place, that a young woman on a, on a high school team was identified as is.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:56:30] Is that person perhaps transgender, when that wasn't the case at all. But by the time it was over, she and her family had been singled out and targeted and ostracized in their community in a very inappropriate and unfair way. And it's this surveillance, judgmental surveillance community that these laws create that, you know, that I'm so concerned about because it singles out people even who aren't, you know, individuals who are transitioning from their biological sex at birth and creates a very unfair environment.
John Dehlin [02:57:05] Yeah, yeah. And it's also just so rare that, you know, for the amount of heat that's been generated by politicizing this issue, it's such a rare situation that it just saddens me at how much pain, how much heat it generated for such
Laurie Lee Hall [02:57:25] little light, how much negativity there is towards a very, very small number of us who are in this situation. Surely in this complicated world, there are majority problems and issues which still need clear minded work done on them, as opposed to focusing on this relatively small population and creating circumstances that are villainizing their behavior and dehumanizing their activity and their existence. Surely there must be better places to spend our political dialogue and our legislative time.
John Dehlin [02:58:10] Yeah. One last issue that comes up quite frequently, as I'm sure you've heard, people will say, you know, I've got no problem with an adult doing whatever transitioning they want to do or even social transitioning or, you know, exploration gender wise as a kid. But they always sort of just jump to. But surgery on children is a terrible thing. It's mutilation, it's. It's abuse. And a kid could confused and they always just want to go to childhood surgery. And I think I have a sense for why that's problematic for being a place where people jump. But how would you address that issue? Comes up so often for me.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:58:54] Right. And again, it's exploiting a fear that's not there, that isn't real, because the
John Dehlin [02:59:02] way it's been politicized, it's like transgender people want to mutilate your children with surgery. You know, that's how it's being talked about.
Laurie Lee Hall [02:59:11] And again, it's fear mongering, creating a fear that just plain isn't there. The Wpath World Professional association for Transgender Health, their standards of care are very measured in how gender affirming care is provided for, not necessarily children at all, but through combining therapy and medical health care begins very incrementally, assisting teenagers, pubescent teenagers, to explore and appropriately receive gender affirming care. And very rarely does that ever get to a point where surgery occurs to anyone who's under 18 years old.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:00:12] There's just so many other incremental steps that occur to help to mitigate the feelings of dysphoria. While an individual in their youth is kind of sorting out who they really are. Nobody's rushing in to do surgeries on young children or on young youth, for that matter.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:00:34] To young teenagers, it just isn't. It's not ethical, and it's not supported by the medical health community. But what I can say is, having traveled the road of a gender dysphoric child and young person up through my teenage years, had I had the opportunity to receive the current standard of gender affirming care that exists and is available legally in some states now, had I been able to receive that in the 1970s, my youth, my experience as a person, would have been far more safe and peaceful and enjoyable.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:01:25] We know that the suicidal ideation that occurs in young people as they're sorting all of this out regarding their gender is best mitigated by gender affirming care involving their doctors, their therapists, their parents, and themselves in a combined effort that doesn't leave any room in the room for state legislatures and governments and churches to dictate what's good and what's right.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:01:58] Honestly, transgender kids, gender variant kids, they need all the support they can get to navigate what is a very challenging experience. As rough as puberty is on every person as they go through it, it's triple rough when your body starts betraying who you feel you really are.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:02:22] And, you know, unfortunately, we lose too many of those young people who don't feel they're in a supportive family or in a supportive community or in a supportive school system, you know, or who are unsupported by their friends and support forth. It just we can, as modern people in the 21st century can do so much better, you know, to protect our youth. It's ironic that the political discussion talks about protecting youth and protecting parents rights and yet they put things in place that harm youth and that take away the rights of parents and take away the ability at educated school. You know, it's just, it's, it's something that's being lied about in ways that are very deceptive.
John Dehlin [03:03:13] Yeah. So if somebody wants to become more educated about this issue to take it out of the, you know, polarization realm and into just the evidence based medical realm, do you, are there some, you know, movies or TV shows or books that you can recommend for someone to kind of get up to speed?
Laurie Lee Hall [03:03:35] There are, there's a wealth of information out there now in terms of, you know, the national organizations of health, the NIH and you know, the AAP and so forth have written extensively about these things. I've talked about the WPATH as an organization worldwide that put standards of care in place. Those things can all be successfully researched. I mention many of them in my orientation to gender in the preface section of my memoir so that those who are interested in digging deep into these things could be guided to reliable sources. You know, you mention in current cultural phenomenon the, you know, the Netflix documentary Will and Harper.
Cultural Reflections on Transgender Visibility
John Dehlin [03:04:26] I loved it was so much fun
Laurie Lee Hall [03:04:29] and you know, of course it doesn't represent young people, but people closer to my age. Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, who Harper was male presenting writer for Saturday Night Live in the era that will participate in that cast and they've been great friends and they go on this journey across the country where Harper has not too long ago transitioned to living authentically as Harper as female. And they encounter various, I think somewhat staged experiences to help prove some points. But it also demonstrated to me an incredible just heart and humanity on Will Ferrell's part and a vulnerability and an openness on, on Harper Steele's part to describe what this experience is like for an adult who transitions and then tries to move about the country.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:05:23] And I've had similar experiences like what she had in Texas, you know, where things didn't go all that well and people didn't take her too positively and you know, and other just thrilling experiences where acceptance is high. And I just thought it was very appropriate and timely look at a friendship that survived transition and that celebrates the individual and their journey.
John Dehlin [03:05:53] Yeah, yeah, we just, we all do better. We all do better when we are all allowed to be our best self.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:06:01] Yeah, right, yeah, absolutely.
John Dehlin [03:06:03] Period. Individually and families, friends, friendships, socially, these
Laurie Lee Hall [03:06:08] are Things that absolutely apply to every person on the earth. You know, even though my book talks about transgender experience, the same principles apply to all humans generally in terms of acceptance, love, affirmation, and the ability to be true to oneself. We all walk on a journey to try to figure ourselves out in some cases as we discover that, you know, we've gone a direction that we don't feel really good about and we want to make adjustments. Those things are all relatable to my story as well.
John Dehlin [03:06:41] Absolutely. Well, just to kind of. To summarize, the book is Dictates of Conscience From Mormon High Priest to My Life as a New Woman. Lori Lee hall. You can pre order this book now@signaturebooks.com it's available in November during Transgender Awareness Week.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:07:01] Transgender Awareness Week, and will be released on November 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors those whose lives have been cut short during the course of the year. And so it's coming at a very symbolic time. We're excited that the hard copy version of this is soon to be in print, and we're excited that it's. It's being well received in a number of circles and just. I'm so excited to be able to tell the story and help change lives.
John Dehlin [03:07:33] So, so huge thanks to you, Lori Lee hall, for being willing to write this book to share your experiences. I'm sure Nancy played an important role in this as well.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:07:46] Hugely so.
John Dehlin [03:07:47] Thanks to Nancy and I'm so happy for the love you two have found together. Huge thanks to Barbara Brown and Signature Books. And please buy this book for yourself. For friends and family. Also check out Will and Harper. It's a great little mini documentary. While we're at it, Barbara's book, Vengeance, that's Mine, is also, if you wanna learn about the Mountain Meadows Matt Massacre, Barbara's done great work there. We just. I was in St. George just a week or two ago. Margi and I were. We had. We had dinner with Shay and Amanda Scott. They've been on Mormon Stories. Their Instagram is really fun and informative. Their YouTube, etc. We'll be having them on soon. They're not quite ready, but. And there are another resource that some people are finding value with as well.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:08:45] Yeah, and I've been able to do a bunch of podcasts in the last few weeks talking about this story. And I've discovered that every single one of these podcasts is different based on the interests of the interviewer and what we wind up talking about. And, you know, if it's okay to plug some of Your competitors?
John Dehlin [03:09:03] They're not competitors. We're all members of the community.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:09:05] Of the community that's telling stories. And the thing that I love is that my story is being told in so many different forms from different perspectives that it hasn't prohibited all that you're going to learn and enjoy by reading the memoir, but it's shining the light on the story in so many different ways that are profound. And there's even things coming out that people are seeing in my story that I had considered.
John Dehlin [03:09:34] So there's Kyle Ashworth's letter Latter Gay Stories, and there's Mormonish with Rebecca, Mormonish
Laurie Lee Hall [03:09:40] with Rebecca and Landon. And Signature Books is putting out their own podcast on their site, which really talks more about how we wrote the book, which may be interesting to many. I interviewed with Blair Hodges on Family Proclamations, interviewed with Richie Stedman on Cultural Hall. Just fascinating how everyone views the book, you know, from a different perspective, which I'm excited about because I really feel it has universality to it.
Temple Building, Church Growth, and Closing Thoughts
John Dehlin [03:10:14] All right, okay. I said that I would mention this, so this is the last thing I'll ask. We'll hurry. So the Mormon Church is building a gazillion temples. There's people trying to figure out what that's about. And there are. Are people worried about are all these temples going to sit empty? Is there enough active membership or will there be enough active membership to even staff, let alone have people attending? Do you have any thoughts from your insider perspective on what's going on there? And it's just because I know so many people are curious.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:10:47] Sure. I have so many thoughts on this that we spent two hours last night talking with Rebecca and Landon on Mormons.
John Dehlin [03:10:54] I'll do cover that.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:10:55] That totally covers that in a separate interview from the one we did regarding the book.
John Dehlin [03:10:59] Oh, so give us the summary.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:11:01] The quick 30 second summary is the Mormon Church isn't building a lot of temples. The Mormon Church is announcing a goshawful announcement level of temples. I've quizzed Rebecca and Landon, who follow things fairly closely with regard to temple construction, how many dedications are occurring each year. And it's still in that same five to six new temple range that our program was producing 15 years ago. And so if anybody can say otherwise, if somebody's aware of the fact that as we announce 30 to 40 to 50 temples a year, that somehow we've figured out how to get 30 to 40 to 50 dedications a year, then I'll accept that as the truth.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:11:49] But so far as I can tell, the centralized program that I was a part of at one time is still a centralized program that has limited capacity to actually design and construct these buildings to the point of getting them dedicated. And so what's happening, in my opinion, is a gross exaggeration of the number of announcements. It's not building and producing lots of new temples. It's still plugging along at the same pace it always has, which is going to create a, a 20 to 30 year backlog of announcements.
John Dehlin [03:12:23] But certainly Mormon prophet Russell Nelson isn't announcing these without the intention of building them.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:12:31] Never said that. I don't think they have the capacity to build them. They've not proven that they've changed gears enough to decentralize that program into a scalable operation that could build that many temples to keep pace with the announcements.
John Dehlin [03:12:46] But haven't they come up with these prefab temples where they ship the temples, you know, and just kind of plug them in?
Laurie Lee Hall [03:12:53] Absolutely not that I'm aware of. I mean, we looked at many ways to improve the efficiency and we really never got past, you know, keeping it centralized at church headquarters. We never got past the ability to produce at the most six or eight dedications in a year. I'm not even sure we hit eight in a year. And it doesn't seem to have changed. So why are announcements taking place has got to be another reason. And why are some communities in the United States having these temples kind of forced upon them? All of those things we touch. In the Mormonish interview that'll be out
John Dehlin [03:13:32] next Tuesday, I have to just my own guess, I have to imagine that they really can't brag on the growth of the, the church membership because so many active members are leaving and the missionary efforts are barely keeping pace with the declining birth rate and the people leaving. So the church is kind of flat in its growth, both with members and missionary efforts. And so it's just, it's just a way to project the appearance of growth, something that's exciting, something that's expanding, when it's reasonable to think that the church might be declining or contracting in other ways. But that does speak to the question of if they do happen to end up building these temples, will they have the membership and, or leadership to manage and fill them? Right.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:14:25] Yeah. In my senses, that there's. This is unsustainable.
Barbara Jones Brown [03:14:34] What?
Laurie Lee Hall [03:14:34] The current level of announcements is totally unsustainable. That's part of what I was trying to describe the fact that operationally that the church membership in many places in the world that temples have been announced, unless those temples follow a much simper approach, simpler operational plan, which the church never seems to have been comfortable doing. There is no way that local small communities of Latter Day Saints are going to be able to operate these rather complex larger temples. I mean, it was tried under President Hinckley with the small temple program. It never fully got implemented because it just didn't seem to be able to work.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:15:20] And I totally believed that that was a good idea. It just didn't implement. I talked with Landon and Rebecca last night about the fact that although I wasn't aware of it, I suggested that perhaps some of these announcements are places where a stake doesn't even exist at this point. And they said, yeah, that's true. Well, back in my day. Makes me sound old.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:15:47] A temple couldn't be considered or announced unless the Stake of Zion existed in that community. What comes with that is a certain level of maturity and church leadership and so forth that's grown up enough that they potentially could support a temple in their midst. And if that's the case, again, the announcements are unsustainable.
John Dehlin [03:16:17] Yeah, well, I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see in the future.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:16:23] I think it's going to look very odd, quite frankly, when at some point, and it may be when the next president of the church takes over, or somewhere on down the line when it seems ridiculous to continue announcing temples that may be decades before they get constructed.
John Dehlin [03:16:41] Yeah. And I've also heard about the church turning it around on local members and saying, we know we've announced the temple here, but we're not building it because you're not faithful enough, you don't pay enough tithing, you haven't brought in enough members as member missionaries. And that's one way that's concerning that. I hear it's being dealt with in terms of the lack of extra constructing more temples.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:17:07] Yeah, that's really edifying, isn't it?
John Dehlin [03:17:11] Not edifying. Okay. Well, that's fascinating. And I'll have to check out the Mormonish episode as well. Thank you so much, Lori Lee hall, for your book, for who you are, for your generosity, for your determination, and for your inspiring story. Thank you.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:17:28] Thank you, John, for giving me the venue to talk again with you and to share these developments.
John Dehlin [03:17:35] My pleasure. All right, Just to conclude, the book is Dictates of Conscience From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman. Lori Lee Hall. Signature Books is the publisher. Go to signaturebooks.com to pre order. Once it's out, you can buy it on Amazon or wherever you get your books. Please support. You can get it at. We always love what's the bookstore here in Salt Lake that might brain is Benchmark Books. We always support Sam Weller Books. Benchmark Books. Supporting bookstores is a good thing.
Book Details and Upcoming Signings
Laurie Lee Hall [03:18:09] I'll actually be back in December to do a book signing at Benchmark, at Weller, at KingsEnglish. Yeah. So look for me back here in a few weeks with the hardcover books available, and we'll talk some more about the story and I'll sign a bunch of books.
John Dehlin [03:18:25] And if people want to reach out to to you directly. Do you like that? And if so, how can they reach you?
Laurie Lee Hall [03:18:30] So Facebook messenger or. My email is loreleehallmail.com for anyone who wants to talk with me. I frequently am approached by parents of transgender kids. Maybe they're just starting their transition experience and they look for help and advice, and I'm happy to give that. If you have comments about the book, be gentle. It's my life and it's vulnerable and transparent.
John Dehlin [03:19:01] Yeah. I always like to say be good to each other. Be kind to each other.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:19:04] Right.
John Dehlin [03:19:05] Be kind to Lori Lee Hall.
Laurie Lee Hall [03:19:07] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:19:07] Yeah. All right, thanks so much, Lori Lee. Thanks to everyone for joining us today. Thanks to Gerardo and Julia and Maven and Brooklyn and everyone who makes all this work possible at Morning Mormon Stories and at the Open Stories Foundation.
John Dehlin [03:19:21] Thanks to all the donors that make this podcast possible. We couldn't do it without you, so thank you. If you're a donor and if you're not a donor but you value this type of content, we can only do this with your support. So if you want to support this podcast and content like this, please go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor and we'll keep providing you content like this us for as long as we are able.
John Dehlin [03:19:47] And yeah, we've got a lot of good stuff coming up in the days, weeks, and months ahead. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care, everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
Thumbnail Credits: Main image provdied by Laurie Lee Hall; Background image of the Provo City Center Temple from SSuper64.
One Response
This week in Mormon Stories censorship
It is sad I have to say this every time, I’m NOT a Mormon. This statement speaks more to the lack of inclusion of alternative viewpoints in Mormon Stories than it does to the “inclusion” work John believes he is promoting. John can be critical, rightfully so, of the Mormon Church’s willingness to censor dissenting voices. John and Mormon Stories are guilty of the same alternative censorship problem as the Mormon Church. It would be nice to hear an alternative civil voice in some of the podcasts.
I’m under no illusion my comments will be posted.
I have a simple question for John because it appears he has inconsistent viewpoints.
John regular chides, with legitimacy, the Mormon truth barometer, namely positive emotions (holy ghost) means truth. As John has said multiple times, feel or human emotions are a terrible way to decern “truth”. John doesn’t seem to acknowledge or doesn’t seem to be self-aware enough to see that the members of the LGBTQ community use the same Mormon ‘truth” barometer, namely feelings. Often, you’ll hear the words “my truth” from the LGBTQ members which are the same words, although framed differently that you hear from Momon testimony.
Mr. Hall feels he was born in the wrong body and has always felt he was a woman. If my son’s told me he feels like he is a cat and would like to start wearing cat clothes, I would tell him the same thing that I would tell a Mormon who feels their church is the only path to God. Okay, if you want me to acknowledge your catness, show me, empirically, that you’re a cat. And you can’t use any words that denote human emotions in expressing your catness.
It is impossible, scientifically, to separate sex and gender. Every part of Mr. Halls DNA has been constructed and organized to express HIS gender. This process started before he was born.
John why don’t you use the same logical fallacy of using human emotions to determine truth when speaking about or with the LGBTQ community? You are quick to make fun of Mormons who use the same logic to determine truth.
I know you have a soft spot for this Community, which is noble, and we should seek to help everyone who struggles with life’s complexities; however, that shouldn’t mean forsaking logic in the pursuit of sympathy.