"Hope for Transgressors" [CLICK HERE FOR SCANS OF THE PAMPHLET] begins by addressing church "Brethren" (apparently bishops and stake presidents) who will have the "privilege and responsibility to assist [homosexual Mormons] to effect a cure and bring their lives back into total normalcy". Kimball (and possibly Petersen) informed lay church leaders that "[e]xpressions of homosexuality...range from petting and love making to sodomy with its degradation". Kimball then calls homosexuality in both men and women a "despicable practice which is "difficult to dislodge" (p. 1). "[R]eformation...can come only by kind persuasion", Kimball says, since the lay leaders are not trained social workers, psychiatrists, or psychologists. However, lay leaders were told that if they were "dedicated and in total attunement with [their] Heavenly Father, [they] will be able to find solutions", despite their utter lack of training in dealing with "extremely lonely and sensitive" homosexuals. Leaders are told to gain the confidence of the Gay members, to use a "scriptural approach", "reason" (emphasizing the reproductivity of heterosexuality and the "barrenness and desolation" of homosexuality), and convincing them that "only futility and disappointment and loneliness lie ahead" (pp. 2-3). The homosexual "should abandon all places, things, situations and people with whom this evil practice has been associated." The homosexual "should purge out the evil then fill his life with constructive positive activities and interests". Gays should cease "reading articles about homosexuality and will substitute therefor the scriptures and worthy books and articles" and should chart the use of their time. Prayer is encouraged, along with frequent interviews with priesthood leaders. When the lay leader feels that the homosexual is ready, "he should be encouraged to date and gradually move his life toward the normal" so that "[m]arriage and normal life can follow" (pp.4-6). This ecclesiastical encouragement to marriage completely ignored the needs, well-being, and, with the advent of AIDS, the physical safety of the heterosexual spouses of those homosexuals who married. Kimball then reminded lay priesthood leaders that "the sin of homosexuality in its degraded aspects is as serious as adultery and fornication", so if the homosexual being counseled does not recover, does not cooperate, ever if he becomes belligerent, "appropriate action must be taken". Kimball then reiiterates that: (1) homosexuality "CAN be cured"; (2) it "CAN be forgiven"; (3) it is not "the fault totally of family conditions"; (4) God "did not make people 'that way'; (5) bishops have "power and resources far beyond the university training"; (6) Satan will thwart all efforts "to change a life which has already turned to him"; (7) prayer is encouraged; (8) scripture reading is encouraged; and lastly, (9) abandonment of everything associated with homosexuality is "important". Kimball then deceivingly concludes the pamphlet with a list of 73 scriptures which "historically" condemn homosexuality! However, even a cursory examination of this enormous list indicates that only four of the 73 could be possibly construed to condemn homosexuality (and the two from the New Testament are challenged by modern biblical scholarship as not refering to it at all).

I must point out that the LDS priesthood leader is not once instructed to feel or demonstrate love or compassion for the homosexual. In fact the only time the word love occurs in this entire pamphlet is when the leader is promised that homosexuals "will love your for all eternity for your help to them"!

A year after "Hope for Transgressors" was distributed to bishops and stake presidents, Kimball published "New horizons for Homosexuals" through Deseret News Press, for distribution throughout the church to all members who were dealing with homosexuality. Written initially for a close relative of Kimball's, either on December 12, 1965 or sometime during 1966, it was revised in 1971 for a more general audience, but retained its "letter" format and saccharine, ingratiating paternalism. [97] [CLICK HERE FOR SCANS OF "NEW HORIZONS FOR HOMOSEXUALS"]

Kimball first informs the homosexual reader, "I am your friend, your real friend, for I am trying hard to help you save yourself frompitfalls, which I am sure, you do not fully realize are gaping wide to swallow you, the victim". He then indicates that while each homosexual has free agency and "may do as you please", "the Lord did not waive penalities and it is an unalterable decree that every man shall suffer or enjoy the due rewards of his deeds." Heterosexuals may "begin the ruinous practice of perversion through curiosity and then become entangled in its tentacles (p. 3). Yet for even those "deeply entrenched, there is hope". Kimball warns that "[s]ex perversion is a hidden menace at first but eventually undermines and destroys its victims" (p. 4). Because sexual impurity is "[n]ext to the crime of murder", no "rationalization can really neutralize the pollution". Kimball then almost wistfully reminds the reader that the "death penalty was exacted in the days of Israel for such wrong-doing" (which both he and Petersen repeat several times throughout the coming years, perhaps to manipulate Gays into believing that the torturous programs the church will promote in the coming decades are nothing in comparison to capital punishment, for which "compassionate leniency" we should be grateful). However, "[t]hese sins are forgivable and can be overcome if there is adequate restraint and repentance" (p. 5). Finally in this pamphlet Kimball does state that "[t]he Lord, His Church, and we, His leaders, love you." However this single affirmation of ecclesiatical "love" rings completely hollow when compared with the rest of the 34 pages of condemnatory language in which Gays and their desires are described as utterly despicable and completely controlled by Satan.

With such increased attention directed at homosexuality, it soon became evident that there were a surprising number of homosexuals in the Church. Kimball's biography mentions several episodes of his counseling homosexual Mormons during the mid-1960s, including four Mormons in the northwestern United States, two of whom were college teachers. After two hours of meetings with them Kimball recorded in his journal that "they claim they see no sin in the matter, but that it is merely a new way of life....I was weary. I had worked so hard and put so much of myself into it trying to persuade them in the very few moments they gave me." Kimball also vistied an excommunicated homosexual engineer in Los Angeles and told him "that we loved him, the Lord loved him; we knew that basically he was a good man; and his eyes dimmed with tears and he said, 'This is the first time anyone from the Church has ever been kind to me in connection with this.'" Kimball also recounted another interview with a young Mormon who was "very curt and almost insulting" to Kimball. The young Gay man told Kimball that he "was not qualified to handle his case or to understand it or to help him, and that it was his problem and that he did not wish to be pressed or hurried or pressured." Ignoring his wishes, Kimball insisted that "as long as he as a returned missionary and held the priesthood and was a member of the Church that we did have jurisdiction and that we did not intend to let him continue on with his sin; unless he was willing to cooperate, he would need to be immediately excommunicated from the Church." Bowing to such incredible brow-beating and ecclesiastical pressure from an Apostle, Kimball smugly reported that the young man "finally began to yield and was willing to cooperate to some degree." When Kimball "personally reported" to President David O. McKay in 1968 on his and Petersen's work in counseling male and female homosexual Mormons, McKay "agreed to an enlarged committee". Kimball then lamented, "We have lost some who did not cooperate and were belligerent and went to the large cities to hide, but I feel there are many happy people today because of the work that Brother Petersen and I have done through the years".[98]

However, it must be pointed out that many (if not all) of the "testimonials" that Kimball oft quoted and used as proof of a homosexual cure were in fact lies, signed by people who were tired of the ecclesiastical harassment, and found escape only by deception. For example, in the early 1970s, Cloy Jenkins met a Mormon man who was engaged to a female friend of Cloy. This man confidentially disclosed to Jenkins that "he was homosexual, that he had received counseling from the church, but that it had had no effect. He had, however, told his counselor that he had changed. After moving away from Utah, he had received what appeared to be a form letter sent by President [sic] Kimball, stating that he had, through his counseling, been cured of homosexuality. He was asked simply to sign his name at the bottom and return it to the church offices, which he did. He felt it was the only practical thing he could do, although he knew full well it was not true. He was and is [homo]sexually active. Yet, through the years, his letter has been held as proof of the 'miracles of forgiveness.'" Several other Gays I have interviewed also told me that they had been sent or personally given similar letters to sign as "proof" that they were "cured" of homosexuality. All signed them in order to decrease ecclesiastical surveillance and punishment. [99]

After ten years of preparation, Kimball finally published in 1969 his classic treatise on sin and repentance, The Miracle of Forgiveness. In chapter six, "The Crime Against Nature", he detailed his absurd theory that masturbation leads to homosexuality, which in turn, can lead to bestiality. He also claimed that "the sin of homosexuality is equal to or greater than that of fornication or adultery," effectively placing homosexuality next to murder in the Mormon hierarchy of sins. As Kimball's biography states, while preparing the text of The Miracle of Forgiveness for publication, he believed that homosexuality "would yield to consistent prayerful exercise of self-restraint. He pointed out that homosexuals rarely were excommunicated for their past acts but usually only for their unwillingness to make the effort to change" their sexual orientation.

Kimball and Petersen were formally released in 1972 from their assignment to "assist" homosexuals in changing their sexual orientation and repenting of their "sinfulness". The assignment was turned over to the "Personal Welfare Service of LDS Social Services". By 1978, the "church director" in charge of working with homosexuals in LDS Social Services was a man named Kent Petersen. However, Kimball continuted to make homosexuality a priority and went out of his way to counsel LGBT Mormons. In 1977, Victor L. Brown Jr. (of the Values Institute) told Duane Jeffrey, BYU Zoology professor, that as of 1976, Kimball had extensive files on some 1500 homo-, bi-, and transexual Mormons. [100]

During the October 1977 General Conference Kimball gave a speech called, "The Foundations of Righteousness" in which once again he severely attacked homosexuality. Kimball told the faithful that "Homosexuality is an ugly sin, but because of its prevalence, the need to warn the uninitiated, and the desire to help those who may already be involved with it, it must be brought into the open. It is the sin of the ages....There is today a strong clamor to make such practices legal by passing legislation....We do not hesitate to tell the world that the cure for these evils is not in surrender....As we think back upon the experiences of Nineveh, Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, we wonder - will history repeat itself?"

While Kimball and Petersen were vociferously attacking homosexuality, Gay Mormons began to dissent and resist. Michael Quinn has documented that in 1966, 26 year old David-Edward Desmond founded a break-off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in Denver, Colorado. "The United Order Family of Christ" was founded specifically for young Gay men only, ages 18 to 30. Because they practiced a uniquely Mormon form of communalism in which they held "everything in common", Desmond affirmed that the Family was "not for the great majority of the Gay LDS". This Mormon schismatic church thus became the second Gay Christian church founded in the United States, the first being a Catholic schism founded by Father George Hyde in 1946 in Atlanta, Georgia and called the Eucharistic Catholic Church, which later moved to New York City. Desmond's "homosexual Church of Jesus Christ" lasted at least until 1973, when Desmond was still corresponding with David C. Martin (then editor of the Restoration Reporter). David-Edward Desmond was born in 1940, in Spokane, Washington to 19-year old Joyce Betty Grasty and her husband named Desmond (first name unknown). David-Edward Desmond died on 11 May, 1983, in Pullman, Washington. Grace Lutheran Church's Rev. Vernon Johnson held the funeral and he was buried in Fairmount Memorial Park, Spokane.



David-Edward Desmond's gravestone, Fairmont Memorial Park, Spokane WA

Photo courtesy of Nat Wall, Queer History Project, Spokane

[click image to enlarge]

Sibling names blacked out

The Hebrew scripture engraved on the stone, 2 Samuel 1:26, reads (per KJV):

"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me:

thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." (see David & Jonathan above)

In 1985, a group of six Gay men in the Los Angeles Chapter of Affirmation formed another Mormon schismatic church for Gays, called the Church of Jesus Christ of All Latter-day Saints (later the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ; not to be confused with the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). Antonio A. Feliz (a former Mormon bishop) was named the first president but he was ousted eight months later because of changes he was making to the church without consent of its members. Controversy and dissent have marked its history since and its membership currently is almost non-existent. The Restoration Church's book of modern scripture is called Hidden Treasures and Promises.[101]



Logo of the Restoration Church

Ironically, Kimball's "definitive" statement against homosexuality in The Miracle of Forgiveness came out just as the "Gay liberation movement" gained national attention with the watershed "Stonewall Riots" in New York City, beginning on June 27, 1969. That night, tens of thousands of Gay men had packed New York City to attend the funeral of the greatly loved Gay icon, Judy Garland. The New York Police Department, used to ignoring homosexuals' constitutional right of freedom to assemble, raided the Stonewall Inn to harass and arrest customers. The normally docile Gays there were in no mood to be shoved around during this time of communal grief, and for the first time in the United States, decided to fight back against this injustice. Led by drag queens and bull-dykes, Gay Liberation activists participated in three nights of rioting in the streets of New York, ushering in a new era for homosexuals to grow beyond their culturally- and religiously-induced shame into a profound sense of human dignity and self-worth. June 27th is now regarded and celebrated internationally as "Gay Pride Day".

The LDS Church responded vociferously to the new homosexual militancy. In March 1970, the First Presidency sent a letter to the church at large, stating that "homosexuals can be assured that in spite of all they may have heard from other sources, they can overcome and return to normal, happy living."[102] A month later, Victor L. Brown Sr., then second counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, gave a speech during General Conference on morality in the family, and addressed homosexuality in the context of pornography. "The chief psychiatrist at one of Washington's largest hospitals says, 'A normal 12- or 13-year-old boy or girl exposed to pornographic literature could develop into a homosexual". Brown added, "Some are even saying, 'What is wrong with becoming a homosexual?' In one church, a leader recently performed a marriage between two male homosexuals. As a matter of fact, some of the world news media made quite a story of it. And yet who is responsible for this moral decay?" Church President Harold B. Lee then delivered a speech on eschatological signs during the Priesthood Meeting of October 1972 General Conference in which he stated,

"I want to warn this great body of priesthood against that great sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, which has been labeled as a sin second only in seriousness to the sin of murder. I speak of the sin of adultery, which, as you know, was the name used by the Master as he referred to unlicensed sexual sins of fornication as well as adultery; and besides this, the equally grievous sin of homosexuality, which seems to be gaining momentum with social acceptance in the Babylon of the world, of which Church members must not be a part."



Mormon President Harold B. Lee

The "grievous sin of homosexuality" is a sign of the "last days"

The circular letter of 1970 and Lee's comment of 1972 were but precursors to the more official (and ecclesiastically binding) First Presidency statement of 1973 which declared that "homosexuality in men and women runs counter to...divine objectives and, therefore, is to be avoided and forsaken." Gays and Lesbians who refused to find their sexuality evil were promised "prompt Church court action."[103] Excommunication to faithful Mormons means eternal exclusion from the "Celestial Kingdom" - a hell in and of itself.

In 1973, Victor L. Brown, Jr. of LDS Social Services wrote the twenty page Homosexuality: Welfare Services Packet I for use in counseling Lesbians and Gay men throughout the church. The packet indicated that "an essential part of repentance" was to disclose to Church authorities the names of other homosexuals, in order "to help save others". The packet also stated that the Lesbian "needs to learn feminine behavior" while the Gay man "needs to learn...what a manly priesthood leader and father does." It also explained that "excommunication cleanses the Church....There is no place in God's Church for those who persist in vile behavior."[104] Ironically, church leaders concluded that the Packet was so "weakly" written that the church could only use it on a very limited basis, only for the simplest of orientations to the controversial topic. In 1980, Gay Mormon bishop Antonio Feliz recorded in his journal that he had found evidence that the Packet had been written in response to the founding of an "apostate group", which he incorrectly identified as "Affirmation" (the support group for Gay ande Lesbian Mormons, founded in 1977 - see below). However Affirmation wasn't an "apostate group" (i.e. a schismatic religion) but merely a support group, and it wasn't even organized until 1977, so it is possible the Packet instead was a response to the 1972 and early 1973 articles that appeared in David C. Martin's Restoration Reporter on the formation of David-Edward Desmond's "homosexual Church of Jesus Christ". [105]



On September 8, 1975, Latter-day Saint Air Force Sgt. Leonard Phillip Matlovich Jr. appeared on the cover of Time magazine, declaring "I am a Homosexual" to the nation and hurling him into the national spotlight as "poster boy" for Gay rights. In a watershed moment for the Gay rights movement, the Gay Mormon was the first openly Gay person ever to appear on the cover of Time or any other major US news magazine. Matlovich was featured in the magazine because he was suing the US Armed Force for discharging him for being Gay, despite the fact that he had an impeccable record, having served three tours of duty in Vietnam, where he received the Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and an Air Force Meritorious Service Medal. Matlovich, initially raised Catholic, had apparently converted to the LDS Church during his tour of duty in Vietnam. He was ordained a Mormon Priest in 1970 and then an Elder on January 19, 1971 while in Vietnam, by W. Brent Hardy.



Sgt. Leonard "Mat" Matlovich - Gay Mormon and

the first out Gay person ever to appear on the cover of Time

Although the Time article did not mention that Matlovich was LDS, when the publicity on his case against the Air Force broke, the Mormon Church conducted a series of trials against him. On August 1, 1975, the Norfolk Virginia Stake High Council met with Matlovich to investigate "alleged wrongdoing on [his] part involving infraction of the standards and rules of the Church". During this meeting, Matlovich "made a strong and convincing plea for time to think and consider the course of action [he was] pursuing, and to decide whether or not to abandon it and to seek professional help", which the Stake Presidency had "offered to help arrange". Matlovich was disfellowshipped at that time, meaning he could attend church meetings but was not "entitled to speak, offer public prayer, partake of the sacrament, or otherwise participate in these meetings". Of course his first charge was to "continue to pay [his] tithes and offerings" to the Church. Matlovich stopped attending church services and declined further "invitations" to meet with the Stake Presidency. Then after his appearance on the cover of Time a month later, the Norfolk Stake leaders decided a more severe punishment was warranted. Stake President W. Boyd Lee (who in 2004 is the president of the Memphis Tennessee LDS Temple) and his two counselors, Kirk T. Waldron and Mark J. Rowe wrote him on September 12, 1975, requesting another appearance before the Stake High Council on September 27, because of his "expressed decision to make no effort to change or correct" his homosexual activism. Matlovich was unable to make that meeting because of "the demands on [his] time by the United States Air Force". However, the High Council ignored his plea to reschedule. They met without him on October 7, 1975 and "took action to excommunicate [him] from the Church". They cited his "intention to continue activism in a practice which is abhorrent to and in direct violation of the laws of our Heavenly Father. We cannot accept that you cannot change or be helped. It is our prayer that you may come to realize that you can indeed be changed and that you will seek such help as is necessary to accomplish it." They informed him that excommunication meant "complete severance from the Church and denial of all Church priveliges [sic] and rights". He was welcome to attend public meetings as a guest but he was "not to pay tithes or other contributions, but [was] encouraged to keep them on deposit until such time as [he] might be readmitted to the Church." Getting money from even ex-members is definitely a priority for the Church. They concluded in their letter to him that they urged him "study the scriptures and pray, that [he might] come to know the truth , and to ignore the rising popular clamor for liberal practices in conflict with God's laws and eternal purposes".

After his court victory against the Air Force (which ultimately ended in Matlovich resigning with a large settlement in hand) he moved to San Francisco, and then appeared on the Phil Donahue television show in 1978. On October 12, 1978, "Mat" Matlovich received yet another summons from the Church, this time from the San Francisco Stake President, Jonas J. Heaton of Daly City, to investigate "conduct in violation of the law and order of the Church"; his second excommunication trial was scheduled for November 15. Matlovich was unable to make that trial date and Heaton wrote an identical letter on November 20, 1978, requesting a trial on January 17, 1979. In January 1979, both the California Sentinel and the Bay Area Reporter published stories of how the LDS church was shortly going to excommunicate Matlovich yet again. Metropolitan Community Church Elder James Sandmire, an excommunicated Mormon “high official” said in the media interviews that he had “had seen or heard of hundreds of these cases where gays have either been ‘disfellowshipped’ or ‘excommunicated’” once, but not twice.

President Jonas Heaton also told the reporters that there “is a move to drop the upfront Gay activist because of ‘conduct in violation of the law and order of the church’- namely his homosexuality.” Leonard in turn vowed, “that the attempt to remove him from Mormon rolls will be a media event.” Leonard admitted he "[was] confused on how he [could] be removed twice from the same church. When Heaton was asked about the double excommunication, the official said, ‘This is a private matter within the church - I know a great deal about Mr. Matlovich that I am not going to discuss.’” Matolovich was then excommunicated a second time from the Mormon Church. As of 1978, due to the unethical treatment he received by the Mormon Church, his faith was crushed and he considered himself somewhere “between an agnostic and an atheist.”

The publicity surrounding him was enormous, and he received thousands of letters from all over the nation and even Europe, praising his courage and bravery for coming out. Of the many letters I read in his archived collection, only two were negative; the rest were heart-wrenching expressions of gratitude. For example, Joseph Allen, a native of Vienna, Austria, wrote him to say, "I saw your picture on the front cover of Time and cried. It is, indeed, a new awakening for us....I feel it happening because of people such as you who are unafraid." Matlovich also befriended and corresponded with several other Gay Mormons. For example, C.R. "Joe" Smith, corresponded regularly with "Mat" in 1978 and 1979, encouraging him in his activism, and frequently mentioning their bond as ex-Mormon Gays. Smith had been raised in Utah but then excommunicated. He had moved to Yucca Valley, California where he and his partner lived for many years together, running an animal shelter in the high desert. Eventually the media circus around Matlovich exhausted him and he grew weary of being at the brunt of the Gay rights movement. However, he did continue to speak out against homophobic crusader Anita Bryant, and in June 1977 was a featured speaker at a large Gay rights convention held in Salt Lake City, during which Affirmation: Gay Mormons United was founded. In 1980, a federal judge ordered the Air Force to reinstate Matlovich with back pay. The Air Force, disgruntled that their policy was found to be discriminatory and illegal, pressed Matlovich to drop his case and settle out of court, or they would appeal the case to the US Supreme Court. Finally Matlovich gave in and accepted $160,000 tax free, and explained to angered Gay rights advocates that "he believed it to be less likely to win a government appeal in front of an increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court." Leonard Matlovich announced that he had HIV on "Good Morning America" television show in July of 1987 and died from AIDS in West Hollywood at the home of a friend on June 22, 1988. His famous epitaph at the Congressional Cemetary in Washington DC reads, "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one". [106]



During the priesthood session of October LDS general conference in 1976 Apostle Boyd K. Packer gave a speech entitled "To Young Men Only", that discussed situations in which young men are "tempted to handle one another, to have contact with one another in unusual ways." He commented that "such practices are perversion....Physical mischief with another man is forbidden." Packer also essentially advocated anti-Gay violence in his speech when he recounted the story of a male missionary who had "hit" and "floored" his mission companion, apparently for simply revealing his sexual orientation. Because Packer does not specify the reason for the violent response, he leaves the interpretation up to the reader. Packer told the missionary, "Well, thanks. Somebody had to do it and it wouldn't be well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way." Packer told his audience, "I am not recommending that course [of violence] to you but I am not omitting it. You must protect yourself".[107] I myself was present at this speech in the Tabernacle as a 15 year old Teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood. His missionary story left me with the harrowing sense that any future violence directed at me for my sexuality was justified by "God and His servants". This antiquated, homophobic speech was later made into a pamphlet by the same name and was distributed worldwide by the LDS Church for use in counseling young men until quite recently. As of 2011, Packer's speech has been deleted from both the "Conference Addresses" and "Ensign articles" of the LDS church's official website, lds.org. While it is good that Packer's toxic and uneducated statements are no longer accessible to the vulnerable, still he has not apologized or been held accountable for his statements in any way. It is as if he simply never gave the speech.

Radicalized Gay and Lesbian Mormons in the late 1970s turned to the publishing world to help bring a voice of liberation to the stifling oppression of homophobia. A year after millionaire David Goodstein purchased the small "Los Angeles Advocate" Gay newsletter, he moved it to San Francisco, called it simply The Advocate, and hired Gay returned missionary (and son of a Mormon bishop) Robert Isaac McQueen as editor-in-chief. McQueen had worked at the University of Utah and as a journalist for the Salt Lake Tribune previously. Robert had known both Brent Tommy Harris and Ray Larson (Gay Mormons) from his days in Salt Lake City and hired them as associate editor and art director respectively. Pat Califia, a lesbian from a "blue collar Mormon family" in Salt Lake also joined the Advocate staff soon thereafter, mainly as the sex advice columnist. These four formed the nucleus of what would jokingly be referred to as "the Mormon Mafia" of the Advocate.

This core group catapulted the Advocate into international success and it is still considered the pre-eminent Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered newsmagazine in the world. They also made sure that Mormon treatment of homosexuals received extensive coverage over the years that they were on staff (for which see below). In June 1981, 42 year-old Brent Harris became the first Advocate staff member (and likely the first Mormon) to die from what would later become known as AIDS. Robert McQueen also died of AIDS in October 1989 at the age of 47. [108]

________

Robert I. McQueen (left) and Pat Califia (right; now "a bisexual transgendered person")

Members of the "Mormon Mafia" at The Advocate in the 1970s

The late spring and early summer of 1977 (especially the month of June) was a momentous and explosive time for Gays and Lesbians both in Utah, as well as nationally. Mormon politicians refused Gays the constitutional right to assemble on state property, Anita Bryant’s homophobic and heterosexist “Save Our Children, Inc.” crusade based in Florida was gaining national attention and momentum resulting in increased violence directed against Gays (including one brutal murder), the ERA was under attack by right-wing extremists using homophobic tactics, a support group for Gay Mormons was formally organized as a reaction against increasing Mormon homophobia, the Mormon-dominated Utah state legislature made homogamy illegal in the state, and it was Gay Pride month nationwide, celebrating the 8th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City, drawing hundreds of thousands of Gays into the streets of the nation in previously unseen numbers.

In April 1977, a formal dance for the Salt Lake "gay Christian community" had been scheduled for the Utah State Capitol Rotunda. However, Lt. Governor David Smith Monson (a Mormon) canceled the dance, disingenuosly citing the safety and security of the dance attendees as his concern (thus blaming the "victim"). Monson said "he was afraid that since the [Metropolican Community] church [sponsoring the dance] admits homosexuals there could be trouble from onlookers." The Metropolitan Community Church filed a suit to force the governor to allow the dance but despite the constitutional guarantee to freedom of assembly, the Third District Judge Dean Conder "wrote a minute entry saying permission was discretionary with Monson and he wouldn't force him to allow the dance." [109]

Also that spring, Gay community members Kenneth A. Kline, Rev. Robert Waldrop, Paul Larson, and Dorothy Makin (all former Mormons) helped organize a convention for the "Salt Lake Coalition for Human Rights" to discuss the plight of Gay rights in America. Kline scheduled the convention to be held at the Mormon-owned Hotel Utah across the street from the Salt Lake Mormon Temple. Ken Kline allegedly informed hotel staff that same-sex dancing would occur at the "Grand Ball" scheduled as part of the convention's activities. (Bob Waldrop, no longer a reverend in MCC, in a recent email to me, admits that he "only had Ken's word for it. My gut feeling was that he had NOT told them, but...I was not about to break ranks on something like that given the way everything was coming down" and Waldrop told the press conference that the Hotel Utah staff had been informed about the convention.) At the beginning of June, the board of directors for the hotel grew alarmed at the advertising published around the city for the convention, making it clear that the "human rights" in question were in fact Gay rights.

In the meantime, voters in Dade County, Florida overwhelmingly repealed its Gay rights ordinance after heavy-handed crusading by orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant on June 7, which was greatly lauded on the front page of the Deseret News. According to Gay ex-Mormon historian, Ben Williams, just two weeks earlier, on May 24, 1977 conservative LDS Utah Senator Orrin Hatch addressed the listeners of Salt Lake radio station KSXX stating, “Well I can tell you this, I think if you take what she [Anita Bryant] says as truth, that she is not prejudiced against the homosexual, but she realizes what they have done, that she does not want them teaching her children. I tell you this — I don’t want them teaching my children, and I don’t want them teaching your children either, and I think they are becoming too blatant in our society, and I don’t want to take other rights away from them, but I sure as heck don’t want them teaching, and I don’t want them in sensitive areas around children.”

The board met on the following day, Wednesday, June 8, and canceled the reservations for the convention's facilities, just three days before the large convention was to begin. Victor L. Brown, Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church and president of the Hotel Utah Company claimed that "Hotel officials...were unaware of the nature of the convention when it was first booked". Brown wrote a letter to organizer Ken Kline saying the booking had been dropped by the board of directors. "When you made arrangements for booking space at the hotel, no mention was made as to the nature of your organization nor the cause it seeks to advance," Brown wrote. "According to the organization's advertising of the convention, those attending will be encouraged to follow homosexual practices contrary to the laws of the state of Utah and prevailing standards of public morals and decency," Brown continued. On Thursday, June 9, 1977, Shirley Pedler, director of the Utah chapter of the ACLU issued a statement to the press "condeming the hotel's action". Pedler cautiously avoided the issue of whether or not the hotel management knew that "human rights" really meant "Gay rights", and instead focused on the fact that the "convention is being held for purposes of discussion and association only and the refusal of the Hotel Utah to make good its commitment to provide facilities violates the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, if not the letter of the law." The convention planners quickly switched venues to the nearby International Dunes Inn (the only hotel in Salt Lake that would take the controversial group) and the convention proceded as planned. Recently excommunicated Leonard Matlovich (see his biography above) and Gay professional football player David Kopay were the keynote speakers. (Although Matlovich had been LDS, he never mentioned this at the press conference in Salt Lake, nor did he tell any of the conference organizers, according to Bob Waldrop. Despite his notoriety, Matlovich was a very private person.) Symposia held at the Dunes on June 11 included "parents of gays discussing their attitudes towards their children, Salt Lake City Police Dept. Vice Squad officers discussing the legal treatment of gays and a former LDS church Stake President, Rev. [James Earl] Sandmire, discussing the religious implications of homosexuality." [109A]



____ ___

From Top Left: David Kopay and Leonard Matlovich

From Bottom Left: Rev. Bob Waldrop, Rev. James Sandmire, and Ken Kline



Some of the speakers and organizers of the 1977 Salt Lake Human Rights convention

During the June 1977 convention members of the "gay Christian community" in Salt Lake City asked Gov. Scott M. Matheson (a "liberal" Mormon Democrat) to appoint a commission to "study the problem of gay rights in Utah". However Michael Youngren, the governor's press secretary said it was "doubtful Matheson would form such a commission" and added that the governor had declined even to meet the group of petitioners.

Most importantly of everything that happened at the convention, Gay and Lesbian Mormons formally organized a support group called "Affirmation: Gay Mormons United, on Saturday, June 11. As Rev. Waldrop recently recalled to me, the Mormons at the convention "had a separate meeting, like a caucus meeting, at the hotel" to found Affirmation. (See Affirmation section for details.) Note that it was also in June 1977 that Gay BYU student, Cloy Jenkins (assisted by Gay Mormons Jeff and Lee Williams, Howard Salisbury, and Donald Attridge) wrote his infamous rebuttal, Prologue, as a response to the homophobic lectures at BYU by Dr. I. Reed Payne. (See Prologue section for details.) His well-reasoned essay remained undisputed by BYU faculty (despite several attempts) and eventually brought an end to the anti-Gay "Values Institue" on campus.

In ever-increasing press coverage of homosexuality that summer, a homophobic article entitled "Hollow Homes" appeared in the Mormon-oriented magazine Sunstone by Bruce Steed, referring to "sodomy and self-abuse" as a "disease" caused by the machismo of "the mythical male role" and a lack of "genuine intimacy" in the home. While Steed didn't agree with Spencer Kimball that masturbation leads to homosexuality (which Kimball had taught in The Miracle of Forgiveness), he did feel that "all who are homosexuals masturbated seriously".[110]

Mother Jones reporter, Bill Sievert, in a comprehensive and thoughtful contemporary investigation into anti-Gay violence, documented that within days of the Dade County, Florida vote repealing anti-Gay discrimination there, "several gay men suffered beatings as they strolled the streets of San Francisco....A number of gay businesses along Castro Street [the predominantly Gay district of the city] became targets of anti-Gay violence. The windows of a gift shop and the headquarters of a local gay politician [Harvey Milk] were blown out by oversized cherry bombs taped to the window panes. One man was slightly injured when someone tossed a cherry bomb through the doorway of...a popular Castro Street bar." A history of homosexuality in San Francisco also reports that at the end of the month of June 1977, "firebombs exploded in five gay-owned businesses" and the annual Gay Halloween street celebration that year was tear-gassed by assailants.

The violence culminated on the night of June 22, just three days before the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, a San Francisco city-employed gardener and religious brother in an Orthodox order, 33 year old Robert Hillsborough, and his on-again-off-again boyfriend, Jerry Taylor, were assaulted by four knife-wielding young men just outside Hillsborough's home in the Mission district. Taylor escaped with severe injuries, but John Cordova and Mike Chavez cornered Hillsborough and while their two friends, Tom Spooner and an unnamed 16 year old, watched, Cordova brutally stabbed Robert 15 times. A neighbor testified that Robert's last words before dying were, "Oh my god, oh my god! What are you doing to me?" All the while, the four men shouted anti-Gay epithets like “faggot”, “queer”, and (allegedly) “this one's for Anita!” Neighbors awakened by the ruckus immediately rushed to the aid of the well-liked man and his partner, but were too late to save Hillsborough. (Cordova was later convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 10 years.) [111]





33 year old Gay gardener, Robert Hillsborough;

murdered in the wake of Bryant's victory in Florida

This heinous hate-murder galvanized Gays and Lesbians in the city and they turned out for the march in unexpectedly massive numbers (estimates run between 100,000 and 300,000 strong), turning it into a protest and “massive Civil Rights March” against Hillsborough’s murder and Bryant’s incendiary homophobia and bigotry. The steps of City Hall at the end of the parade route became an impromptu memorial site where marchers laid photos and flowers in Hillsborough’s honor.

________

Impromptu memorial for murdered Gay man, Robert Hillsborough, San Francisco City Hall

and view of the Gay demonstrators from the steps

(click for larger images)

Photos from Uncle Donald's Castro Street website, used with permission

For the San Francisco Gay Pride march, Larry Agriesti created a series of large posters representing historical bigots, including Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, Adolt Hitler, and the Ku Klux Klan – and at the very center, a large poster of an angelic Anita Bryant singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic".



Anita Bryant at the center of "Bigots on Parade", June 1977

(click for larger images)

Photo from Uncle Donald's Castro Street website, used with permission

Agriesti writes, “The response from the crowds and media was overwhelming; something I hadn’t expected…” and his entry won a “Cable Car” award from the Parade Committee for best parade entry called “Bigots on Parade”.



The Deseret News alarmingly reported that the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco that year was even larger than any of the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s. Just one year earlier, the parade had drawn between 12,000 and 90,000 people. It was becoming apparent that Anita's campaign and the subsequent rash of anti-Gay violence in San Francisco and elsewhere- especially Robert Hillsborough's murder - brought Gays out of the closet in record numbers. (I myself came out to my high school Mormon religion teacher, Robert Woods, in June 1977, spurred by these national events, even though I was only 15 at the time. Woods then had me immediately contact my bishop, Sheldon Childs - a 2nd cousin of my mother and now a General Authority - and I was put in the church's "program" of fasting, prayer, weekly interviews, and "therapy" to make me heterosexual.)

Robert’s mother, Helen Hillsborough, told the press that her “son’s blood is on [Bryant’s] hands”. The mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, accused "demagogues" like Bryant and other prominent homophobes of the day of creating a "climate of hate and bigotry" against Gays, then offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpitrators (who were soon caught), and ordered the city's flags lowered to half-mast on the day of Hillsborough's funeral. (Note that one year later, Mayor Moscone himself and Gay city supervisor Harvey MIlk would be assassinated by fellow supervisor Dan White, in a brutal anti-Gay hate crime at City Hall.) Anita Bryant was later named as a defendant in a $5 million civil law suit which contended that her “Save Our Children” campaign against homosexual equal rights had inspired the fatal assault on Robert Hillsborough. By the end of November 1977, however, Bryant had been dropped as a defendant. [112]

In October 1977, 27 year old Thom L. Higgins, a Gay rights activist posing as a journalist, hit Bryant in the face with a banana cream pie during one of her anti-Gay rallies in Des Moines, Iowa.



Bryant learns "in your face" politics from Thom Higgins in Iowa

[click for larger image]

copyright 2004 by Des Moines Register

Humiliated and forever tarnished by the image of the pie dripping from her face, a stunned Anita finally bowed her head and prayed in front of a national news audience that Higgins “be delivered from his deviant lifestyle”. After sobbing briefly she then quipped, “At least it was a fruit pie”.

Gay rights activists successfully retaliated with an important moral victory when a Gay-lead nationwide boycott of Florida orange juice resulted in Bryant losing her job as spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Growers' Association. And Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign ultimately failed, as one activist wrote, in that she "provided a focus for the [Gay] community and a platform for presenting our case. 'Gay' became a household word. We became front page news." An August 1977 report by Mother Jones on the effects of Bryant's campaign agreed, noting that she "has done more to politically energize American homosexuals than anything since the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York's Greenwich Village launched the modern-day gay liberation movement." The magazine also interviewed Robert McQueen, former LDS editor of the Gay newsmagazine The Advocate, who stated "It's really more significant than Stonewall....Bryant has crystallized the issue. She's declared war, and she's got a lot more people coming out of their closets to fight back. Gay people are being politicized like never before." The article concluded by understating that "there is a growing sense of outrage among American homosexuals - an anger that is expected to be felt increasingly in the political arena in the months to come."

Just two weeks before the devastating International Women's Years conference in Utah (see section on the Equal Rights Amendment), Barbara B. Smith, general president of the LDS Relief Society, sent a telegram to Bryant, saying,

"On behalf of the one million members of the Relief Society...we commend you for your courageous and effective efforts in combatting homosexuality and laws which would legitimize this insidious life style. We congraulate you on the overwhelming victory of your forces in Florida's Dade County elections. We stand with you in your worthy efforts to strenghten the family and the home, the cornerstone of America's strength. Thinking men and women across our nation, concerned about the moral fiber of our country, will join also in the fight against the disruptive influences to our homes such as pornography, homosexuality and growing permissiveness."

Adding fuel to the fire, Utah State Fair director Hugh C. Bringhurst announced on June 28 that Anita Bryant, "songstress and antigay rights publicist" would be singing and holding a rally at the Fair on September 18, 1977. Outraged by this choice, the Salt Lake Coalition for Human Rights began in June to organize a counter protest at the Fair. Barbecues, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters were used to raise money for the protest. The Coalition received official support from the Salt Lake Metropolitan Community Church, the Gay Services Coaliton of Utah, the Gay Student Union (at the University of Utah), Women Aware (a Lesbian-feminist organization in Salt Lake) and the Socialist Workers' Party of Utah. As a result, over 100 Gay activists turned out to form a picket line at the Fair. Some of the picketers were spat upon by attendees and some people were escorted out of the stadium, but no violence broke out. The protesters later circumnavigated Temple Square chanting slogans against oppression of Gays. Some 500 Gay rights supporters attended a vigil that night at Memory Grove in downtown Salt Lake, partially as a memorial for the murdered Robert Hillsborough. Waldrop also reports that at the vigil, "somebody hiding up above the group on a hill tossed a canister of tear gas down on the crowd. It fell into an open space and everybody drew back even more when they smelled what it was." (Waldrop also remembers that during that same month, he was outside a Salt Lake Gay bar handing out invitations to attend the Metropolitan Community Church when four youths wielding bats drove up to him to assault him, but then hastily departed upon seeing he was dressed in his ministerial shirt.)

In response to Gay organzing against the former "beauty queen turned fruit-juice peddler", on July 9, Mormon Apostle Mark E. Petersen claimed in an editorial in the Church News that "every right-thinking person will sustain Miss Bryant, a prayerful, upright citizen, for her stand", which Petersen hoped would "keep this evil from spreading, by legal acceptance, through our society." In November of that same year, Spencer Kimball, now church president, told reporters that Bryant was "doing a great service" because church leaders feel that "the homosexual program is not a natural and normal way of life." Yet when asked if Kimball fully "endorsed" Bryant's campaign, Kimball felt that he would not go that far. [113]



On June 29, 1977, House Bill 3 (HB3), by LDS Rep. Georgia Peterson, R-Salt Lake, fresh from her controversial victory at the IWY Conference, passed the Utah State House of Representatives by a landslide vote of 71 to 3, making "homosexual marriages in the state of Utah...illegal". The Deseret News noted that "the issue of homosexual marriages was not even discussed on the floor of the House", there being no question of voting in favor of the homophobic bill.



Toward the end of the month, two non-Mormon anti-Gay editorials appeared in the pages of the Mormon-owned Deseret News, one by a nationally syndicated reporter and conservative Catholic professor of religion at Syracuse University, Dr. Michael Novak, and the other by Jewish professor of child development at the University of Utah, Dr. Elliott Landau.



Lauding the triumph over Gay rights in Dade County, Florida, Novak admits that "the state should not intrude on the private life of citizens". But distinguishing between "the state" and "society", he claims that society "has not only the right but also the duty to make moral distinctions". He appeals to Freudian views by listing the narcissism of homosexuality as the first of "two basic deficiencies in the homosexual way of life". Heterosexuality, unlike the easily shattered "shell" of homosexuality, is to be privileged by society because it "is rooted in the cycle of the generations, that long prosaic realism of familial responsibilities which is the inner rhythm of the human race."



The second deficiency "follows from the first": homosexuality is "structurally" transient and restless, while the affections that homosexual feel is merely "seasonal". Heterosexual unions on the other hand are "difficult" and to "help them succeed is of indispensable priority" to society. Finally, "only a repressive society would try to punish homosexuals. Only a decadent society would grant them equal status." [114]



Dr. Landau also penned a lengthy piece attacking homosexuality, this editorial exclusively for the Mormon paper, despite the advise of many of his colleagues to the contrary. Landau began by carefully, almost thoughtfully explaining both points of view, pro-Gay and anti- (as stated in the article's title). But then he quickly admited that he "could never go along" with the belief that homosexuality is a "viable, acceptable and psychologically healthy sexual preference" and considered "homosexuality undesirable behavior". Despite the promised varying opinions, Landau merely regurgitated a very Freudian and Oedipal view that "most importantly, the family seems to play a vital role" in sexual orientation, especially "negative childhood interaction with...fathers". He then, in a bold anti-feminist tactic (designed to keep women in their place), blamed matriarchal homes, where the father is "less dominant than the mother", as being the ideal breeding ground for homosexuality. "While having the proper kind of father [described earlier as warm, nurturant, yet dominant] is no guarantee of a male growing up heterosexual, the odds for normal development are better." Ultimately, Landau believed that only through heterosexuality can a person have a "happy, healthy, normal kind of life in adulthood". Obviously the leadership at Deseret News felt it important to have non-Mormon (and even non-Christian) religious and educated voices that perfectly harmonized with their own, shoring up important alliances in defense of their misinformed bigotry. [115]

The sharp increase in homophobic discourse, policy, and politics in the mid-70s rankled Gay Mormons. Informal social networks were effective on an individual basis, but as a few strong and courageous people gave up their "Gay shame", they realized that something more formally organized and lasting was needed in order to respond to the misconceptions and disinformation being spread by LDS and BYU leaders. In early 1977, a group of Gays started meeting quietly on the BYU campus. However, "after hearing about all the suicides taking place" among Gay Mormons (especially the suicides of Gay BYU professor Carlyle Marsden, and of two men who had gone through electric shock "therapy" at BYU the year prior with Ford McBride and Dr. Eugene Thorne), the group decided to take more formal action. One of this group, 22-year old Gay convert from Davis, California, Stephen James Matthew Price (going by first by Matthew Price and then a later alias of Stephan J. Zakharias), "became very enthused at the idea of a national organization of gay LDS people and began to promote it with gusto." As Zakharias told The Advocate in the November 1977 issue, "We have said 'We've had enough.' Gay people are not second-class citizens. We are children of God. We are important people and we have just as much worth as our heterosexual brothers and sisters in the church."



Stephen J. Matthew Price (alias Stephan J. "Zak" Zakharias), Founder of

Affirmation: Gay Mormons United, 1977

photo by Jay Bell, 2003

A new national organization was then formed at the Human Rights Conference held in Salt Lake City on June 11, 1977. Zakharias was made National Director of what was then called Affirmation: Gay Mormons United. (The name would later change to Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons.) Zakharias decided to move Affirmation's national headquarters to Denver that fall "to avoid church oppression." As he explained to The Advocate, "There is a lot of paranoia in our group right now....Each one of us is still in love with the church and we still adhere very strongly to its teachings. But at the same time we cannot deny what we are....[I]t's time we started meeting our own needs, because the church hasn't provided a positive atmosphere in which to do this." Members were so paranoid about being discovered that the mailing list was kept in a safe deposit box in Denver, and members wer encouraged by Price/Zakharias to go by their middle names plus their mother's or grandmother's maiden names, and in fact his own grandmother's maiden name was Zachares. [115A]

After the November 1977 issue of The Advocate came out, membership in Affirmation tripled within a month, and members from 8 foreign countries joined, making it an international organization. Two women named Mary and Kathy joined the "international official board" and headed the "sisterhood wing" of Affirmation, "the first gay organization with a wing specifically designed to meet the needs of the lesbian community within any church". Besides Steve, Mary, and Kathy, other international officers included Rick (assistant director), Gary (secretary), and David W. (treasurer). Affirmation was founded because "Mormon gays have been the most oppressed and guilt-laden group, as well as the most misunderstood, within the Church". However, Lesbian and Gay Mormons were "oft-times...the most contributory, stalwart, creative, service-oriented, and industrious members in our wards and stakes". Therefored Affirmation's mission was to (1), "provide a positive and supportive atmosphere where LDS gays and lesbians can meet each other", (2) "lessen the paranoia and guilt, fear and self-oppression that LDS homosexuals experiencee", and (3) "educate and strengthen each other through conversation, dialogue, and correspondence among ourselves". Steve Zakharias also noted in the December 1977 Affirmation newsletter that "due to the increase of our membership and the need for a central locale", the now international offices of Affirmation had moved to Dallas, Texas. Chapters were then forming in New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Dallas, and one was possibly starting in Seattle. Despite the location of the international headquarters in Dallas, it was the Los Angeles chapter, under the brilliant leadership of Paul Mortensen, that sustained Affirmation during its early years.

Mortensen, after reading the November 1977 article, contacted Zakharias about Affirmation/GMU. On January 28, 1978, six Gay Mormons met in Paul's West Hollywood apartment and formally organized the Los Angeles Chapter of GMU, and membership there "skyrockted". Paul's financial, counselling, and leadership contributions to Affirmation and all LGBT Mormons cannot be underestimated, literally saving an untold number of lives through his dedication to improving the status of Mormon homosexuals. [115B]



Lee Williams organized the first Salt Lake Chapter of Affirmation: Gay Mormons United in 1978, after placing flyers in the Gay bars and cruising areas of Salt Lake, as well as on the BYU campus. A year later, the Salt Lake Chapter disbanded but then was reorganized soon thereafter by Alma Smith, John Cooper, and Mel Barber. It later withdrew from official affiliation with the national organization because its leaders were more radical and less accommodating to Mormonism's anti-Gay stance than the national leadership.

In both 1979 and 1980, Affirmation's national leaders requested audiences with the First Presidency but their requests were denied.

From July 1977 to July 1979, Apostle Mark E. Petersen wrote six extremely harsh editorials for the Mormon Church News attacking the national Gay rights movement. For Petersen, homosexuality was "a menace to the population at large". According to him, Lesbian and Gay pleas for tolerance and legal recourse for discrimination "should disgust every thinking person". The following are quotes from five of Petersen's editorials, highlighting his homophobic viewpoint:

After the publication of Petersen's second egregiously homophobic editorial, Rev. Robert Waldrop of Salt Lake Metropolitan Community Church published a very well-written response in April 1978. Waldrop first clarified that Gays were not seeking "special rights" - just the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He then questioned why Mormon leaders (Kimball and Petersen especially) continually point out (and bemoan?) the fact that homosexuality is no longer a capital crime. He rightly questions, "Is the hidden desire of the LDS leadership one of seeing this put back into law?" Waldrop also questioned how Petersen could lump homosexuals together with "thieves and robbers". He notes that "many people seek to deprive of us livelihood, property, credit, employment, etc." because of their homophobia and asks, "now you tell me, who are the real thieves and robbers today?" Waldrop finished his "open response" with a public challenge for Petersen to meet with him for a public debate on these issues. Waldrop concluded that, "Secure in our faith, beliefs and life-style, we are willing to talk and discuss and dialogue. It remains to be seen, however, if the other side is similarly secure." Tellingly Petersen did not respond to Waldrop's challenge. [117]

Utah congressman Gunn McKay (D-Utah) announced to the press in September 1977 that, "I do not believe that the Gay's right to be free from discrimination is greater than the right to live and work in a community whose moral standards reject homosexual activity. People should not be compelled against their will to hire, rent to, or have their children taught by homosexuals." Utah Supreme Court Justice, Albert Ellett, ruled in favor of Salt Lake City's obscenity ordinances in November 1977. In upholding the ordinances, the Mormon judge born in Alabama controversially denounced "depraved, mentally deficient, mind-warped queers" in his judicial opinion. The website for the University of Missouri School of Law nominates Ellett's decision for "the most intemperate judicial opinion of all time". [118]

When the Washington State Supreme Court in 1977 upheld the 1972 firing of Gay high school teacher James Gaylord, offical LDS Church spokesman Jerry Cahill announced to the Utah media that he was "sure the church would consider it the appropriate decision" because church members felt that homosexuality "is deviant and sinful behavior", destructive to families and family life. In Gaylord v. Tacoma School District, Gaylord was summarily deprived of his livelihood, teaching, "without any evidence of any overt or improper conduct whatsoever; merely this admission of being gay was all that was required to be fired". In a remarkable reversal of fortune, Gaylord's dimissal was recently cited by Thurston County, Washington Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks as an example of previous jurisprudential injustices committed against homosexuals by the state, in his decision which ruled that the state of Washington cannot give the privilege of marriage to one group of people and not to others without good reason for the discrimination. Because he could find absolutely no "rational" reason for said discrimination, Judge Hicks ruled in September 2004 that the state ban against homogamy (same-sex marriage) is unconstituional.[119]



James Gaylord on the porch of his Tacoma home in 2004,

the exact spot where he was fired in 1972 when his Vice Principal

simply asked him if he were Gay and he responded, "Yes".

Paul Lynde, the campy comedian of Bye Bye Birdie, Bewitched, and Hollywood Squares fame, was arrested outside the Sun Tavern (a Salt Lake City Gay bar) on January 11, 1978, for interfering with a police officer. The drunk and mean-spirited Lynde had been in the gay bar drinking and had returned to his limousine with a man he had met in the bar, only to find that his car had been broken into and his brief case was missing. Police officer Scott Candland was already in the area investigating another complaint about vehicle vandalism at the Gay bar, when he was accosted by the drunken Lynde, who tried to coerce the cop into looking for his briefcase. Candland arrested Lynde (a charge for public intoxication was dropped) and he spent three hours in Salt Lake City jail before posting his $50 bond. His arrest was publicized in the Salt Lake Tribune on the January 12th, and in the New York Times on the 13th. A favorite guest on the Donny and Marie Show, Lynde contacted the Osmond matriarch, Olive Osmond, to secure bail for him in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, the well publicized scandal of his being arrested at a Gay bar caused the Osmonds to fire Lynde from the show. [120]



Paul Lynde, arrested outside Salt Lake Gay bar,

then fired from the Donny and Marie Show

As reported in the June 1978 issue of Sunstone, a Mormon living in San Jose, California named Richard Harrington became chairman of the "Citizens Committee Against Gay Pride Week". In March 1978 he had informed the San Jose City Council, "We do not want San Jose recognized as a city which honors homosexuals, and we do not want San Jose to become a symbol of sexual deviation." Harrington told the city council his group represented sixty churches with 60,000 members and presented a petition signed by 30,000 people protesting the city's approval for "Gay Pride Week" in June. The city council obliged by rescinding the Gay Pride resolution, but then in a stunning reversal designated the week "Gay Human Rights Week" instead. Vice-Mayor of San Jose Susanne Wilson reported that she was "grieved" at the "animosity expressed in letters" she received from Mormons and other Christians "who opposed the special-week proclamation". That same summer, a Mormon police officer in Seattle, Washington named David Estes began a voter initiative to repeal Seattle city ordinances protecting employment and housing for Gays and Lesbians. Estes told voters that "as a priesthood holder in my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day [sic] Saints, or the Mormon Church, I have the obligation to say what's right whether or not people listen." In a chilling statement to the press, Estes stated that he believed that those convicted of sodomy should be "given mental health care at state expense, voluntarily if they agree, involuntarily if they do not". Besides repealing protective ordinances, the proposed initiative would also "forbid any government agency or any agency that receives government support of any kind, from advocating rights for sexual minorities." The initiative was strongly supported by "avowed Christian fundamentalists" and leaders from the ultra right-wing John Birch Society (which had strong ties to Mormon Apostle Ezra Taft Benson). On November 7, 1978, the anti-Gay initiative was soundly defeated with 64% of Seattle voters opposed to it. David Estes would attempt to pass a very similar initiative again in 1980, and again would be defeated. [121]



Walt Crawley's poster opposing Mormon sponsored anti-Gay "Initiative 13" in Seattle

.

The Equal Rights Amendment and the International Women's Year (IWY) conference in Salt Lake City

The same month that the Salt Lake Human Rights Convention was held (during which Affirmation was founded), Mormon feminists were also taking the LDS church to task for not supporting the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution. The LDS church used the homophobia it had spawned among its members over the previous decade to help defeat the ERA nationally; and in turn, these homophobic tactics galvanized and radicalized many Mormon Lesbians. While the initial October 1976 statement from the First Presidency on the ERA made no mention of homosexuality (only that passage of it might "bring ambiguity"), within a year fears of endorsing homosexuality and a "unisex society" were cited frequently by Mormon leaders as reasons to oppose it. 22 October 1976-The LDS First Presidency issued a statement against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution saying "We fear it will even stifle many God-given feminine instincts." The first Presidency stated its first objection to passage of the ERA fearing "an increase in the practice of homosexual and Lesbian activities, and other concepts which could

alter the natural, God-given relationship of men and women." [122]

Dr. Jan Tyler, a BYU professor, became chair of the state conference held for International Women's Year, in Salt Lake on June 24, 1977. While some 3,000 women were expected at the state-wide event, some 10,000 actually showed up because the LDS church had sent word through its women's auxiliary organization, the Relief Society, for every Mormon woman in the state "to attend the meeting and vote against every proposal offered". Debra Burrington, a still-closeted Lesbian graduate student at BYU and intern for LDS Welfare Services, had been asked by her boss to attend. It was during the conference that Burrington saw her "first actual lesbian", who was there attempting to pass out copies of Salt Lake's first Lesbian newspaper. However, her "over-the-top butchiness [Lesbian masculinity], the lavendar arm band and the word 'lesbian' in the title of the newspaper caused most of the people to whom she offered it to recoil in fear".



Dr. Debra Burrington, LDS Lesbian and IWY attendee

Burrington noted that besides the hordes of right-wing LDS women at the conference, the John Birch Society had also shown up both with walkie-talkies and "a prepared list of the 'approved' candidates who should be voted as Utah's delegation...in Houston". Of course all proposals regarding women's right to choose and homosexual rights were easily voted down. However, when a proposal to promote world peace came up, Burrington voted for it, and was struck in the back of the head with the purse of a woman from Utah County who was sitting behind her. Burrington writes that "I can still smell the fear emanating from her, the fear that her world would come to an end if a single one of these proposals made it out of the meeting". The IWY conference in Utah "has always held the distinction of being the only state-level IWY meeting that voted overwhelmingly against every proposal that had been made by the guiding task forces". Burrington and a number of other Utah and Mormon Lesbians I have known through the years were galvanized by the unethical tactics used by Mormons at the conference. Burrington wrote to me that "International Women's Year was a radicalizing and damaging experience for a lot of women...but I didn't come out as a lesbian unil another year and a half alter. I was still afraid that I couldn't be both a Momron and a feminist at that point, and IWY solidified, for me at least, that the two identities are fundamentally incompatible." It was also "a given that if feminism and Mormonism are incompatible, that lesbianism and Mormonism exist even farther apart". Another "actual" Lesbian at the event was another BYU graduate student who was chair of two of the largest task forces for the IWY conference. She and Burrington only met many months later, but what brought them together first as friends, and later as lovers, "was the anger and pain both of us felt in the wake of IWY". Thus like the mythological Phoenix, out of the ashes of "damaging" events like these, great things are born. As Burrington queries, "Do conservatives understand that their foaming at the mouth often has an effect opposite to what they intend? Some of us may spend years in fear of disapproval and of being foisted from our communities, but even more of us recover and go on to fight another day, to fight even better than before, to forge new paths, new ways of being family to one another, and discover even more creative ways to make fabulous lives together." (Debra Burrington went on to teach Women's Studies at the University of Utah in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where I had the immense pleasure of taking classes from her, as a double-major in History and Women's Studies myself. Her "Introduction to Women's Studies" course forever changed and improved my life and the lives of every student in that class. She and I have maintained a solid friendship over the years and both live in California currenlty.) According to church spokesman, Jerry Cahill, "homosexuality has become an issue recently...with International Women's Year", "discussions have pointed to that problem." Subsequently the church reissued its earlier edicts against homosexuality to all priesthood leaders, reminding them of the church's "firm stand". Cahill also promised that "there's no end to the things that the Church will do to assist" church leaders in counseling LGBT Mormons.[123]

At the national IWY conference held in Houston, Texas in November 1977, members of the press received a packet of official press releases as they received their credentials, originating from the U.S. Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, indicating that the LDS Church was part of a "radical right-wing group" that had tried to "take over and distrupt the state IWY conferences". Others in this alleged radical, anti-feminist group were the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Socity, Ciitizen's Forum, Conservative Caucus, coalitions of fundamentalist churches, and Right to Life. [124]

Also in 1978, the First Presidency issued a lengthy statement opposing the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

1978 Pamphlet cover and excerpt

(Click on images to enlarge) 1979 Relief Society Pamphlet

(Click on images to enlarge )

.

Preying upon the homophobia of church members, the church's official statement claimed that passage of the ERA would bring about an "encouragement of those who seek a unisex society, an increase in the practice of homosexual and lesbian activities, and other concepts which could alter the natural, God-given relationship of men and women." These and other anti-Gay phobias were reiterated in subsequent anti-ERA propaganda published by the church in 1979 and 1980. In June 1979, AP reporter David Briscoe interviewed Mormon President Spencer Kimball on the ERA and noted in a subsequent article for Utah Holiday that his "personal impression after the interview was that the 'homosexual issue' is a major factor in President Kimball's opposition" to the amendment.

This fear of a "unisex society" lies at the core of Mormon homophobia, for the hierarchy has a vested interest in keeping gender lines firmly drawn. Any blurring of those lines, any weakening of gendered activities, places Mormon men in a locus where they can only lose power, authority, and prestige. As the First Presidency wrote in 1991 in an anti-Gay letter to the entire church, "A correct understanding of the divinely appointed roles of men and women will fortify all against sinful practices" such as "homosexual and lesbian behavior" (emphasis mine). [125]

Mormon men fear the "homosexual within". If church leaders believe that homosexuality is contagious and the entire world can "convert" to homosexuality as easily as to Mormonism, then they must include themselves in that conversion. Spencer Kimball, in New Horizons for Homosexuals asked readers to "imagine, if you can, the total race skidding down in this practice...just one generation of gratification of lusts and the end." Furthermore, "where would the world go if such a practice became general? The answer: To the same place other unbridled civilizations have gone."[126] Earlier, Kimball proclaimed that "if the abominable practice became universal it would depopulate the earth in a single generation".[127] Mormon bishop T. Eugene Shoemaker ironically denied the idea that homosexuality is a "crime against nature", going so far as to argue that "homosexuality is wrong, not because it is unnatural, but rather because it is too natural, and unless the human species changes utterly, men and women will continue to choose freely to do evil".[128] I get a sense from these statements that Mormon leaders believe that they have such fragile and weak sexual identities that the slightest nudge might send them careening "over the edge".

At the same time, Mormon leaders are aware that homosociality (which they vigorously participate in) is very closely aligned to homosexuality on the "homo-continuum". Just four days before Christmas 1977, LDS therapist and Values Institute member Victor L. Brown, Jr. told Duane Jeffrey of a "recent case of a man (a bishop?) who with his wife came to Utah to get help in overcoming his homosexuality: there were times when he felt so good, so fond of other men that he wanted to hug them to express it. He was repulsed by any suggestion of sexual involvement, however!" Brown explained to this man that the General Authorities of the church "so hugged each other at [general] conference, sometimes for rather long periods of time, that this was not homosexuality at all!! The man left, and his wife [was] very relieved and enlightened. Six months later [Brown] got a letter from them saying what a tremendous difference it had made to him to realize that these feelings of genuine love and rapport were normal and not homosexual! The man's guilt burden had been totally lifted."[129]

Brown, also addressing the church's awareness of female homosociality, said that "it is fairly common to find women who are turned off by the male society, and who find friendship and companionship from another female, but between the pair there is absolutely no sexual situation at all, just companionship. [The] Church is aware and sensitive to this; the [definition] of homosexuality [in church manuals?] has been 'carefully re-worded' to try to steer around this, the word 'relations' was changed to 'relationships' for this reason". Brown indicated that the "gospel ideal" of the male gender role actually "has many feminine qualities" because a Mormon man "should be tender, loving, gentle, etc., [which] implies femininity". Brown believed that a "male does not give up his masculinity when he behaves this way", and society "must get rid of idea that to be male a male must be aggressive, brutal, pugnacious, possessive."[130]

During the "Gay Pride Week" activities held in Salt Lake City on June 24 and 25, 1978, a seminar was held called "Religion and the Gay Person". Discussion centered aroud "guilt feelings many homosexuals experience because of fears of losing their salvation". Rev. Robert Waldrop said that "many of the gays in the audience were members" of the Mormon Church "and had been on missions or through the temple." He added that "those who had that kind of commitment experience the guilt far stronger than Mormons who had not". He encouraged Gays to "liberate ourselves", feeling that we Gays can be "our own worst oppressors". [131]

A 21 year old Gay Mormon who was on his mission wrote a touching letter to the editor of the Open Door in September 1978, describing his "surrender" to his sexuality despite Kimball's "damnation" of it:

I have adhered to and lived by the Church's counsel and guidelines most of my life, while at the same time being tormented by something inside me that countered some of the Church's most steadfast rules. Something that defied change and quietly but stubbornly rebelled against everything that it was claimed to be by President Kimball in his seemingly endless and merciless damnation of it. Something that has caused me endless nights of lost sleep and endless days of struggle, denial, guilt and tears. Something defined as homosexuality. I suppose I am, and have been for a number of years (if not always), a homosexual. The events which led up to my going on a mission for the Mormon Church are another chapter entirely. Perhaps, as much as anything, it was hope and faith which harboured the rationale of 2 years devoted service to the Lord in exchange for the withdrawal of that something which President Kimball never failed to blacklist. If I have accepted my sexuality, it has not been out of defiance, pride (or shame), adventure, or understanding. Merely surrender. After years of hope, prayer, faith, work, and unending anguish, I cannot go on playing Don Quixote fighting a windmill for which there is no conquering. However, my surrender is by no means resignation to the bleak and sordid lifestyle which the Church paints as a future for the homosexual. I believe in myself and all the blessings and opportunities of life which have been given me and I intend to make the most of my life and talents regardless of the sex of the person I share that life with. I am a man and I respect the male race for what it is and what it should be and I am proud to be a part of it. I expect the same from any other male. Finally, for just exactly what I am writing, I cannot say. Perhaps for hope. An understanding, through experience, of the very real dilemma which we face. Perhaps for an alternative solution to the one which the Church offers. Perhaps I write simply for the comfort of knowing that there is, out there somewhere, someone else with the goals, aspirations and the optimism for life that I feel. [131A]

One month after this heart-wrenching letter was published, members of Salt Lake's Gay community, weary from constant police harassment, began a concerted campaign to end it through legal pressure. Sgt. Harkness of the Salt Lake Police Department had recently been quoted in a Salt Lake Tribune article as stating that "there are 10,000 practicing open homosexuals in the Salt Lake Valley and if any local officers need practice in busting homosexuals, this is an ideal training ground." A Deseret News article of July 29, 1978 suggested that "if Homosexuals were removed" by the police from active participation in society, the current epidemic of venereal diseases circulating in the country "would virtually clear up".

The Gay community also protested the selective and "excessive" police enforcement of public nuisance and public intoxication statutes. Gay bars were constantly and regularly targeted by police while straight bars with much worse public intoxication problems remained untargeted. Mel Stuck, head of the liquor control tactical squad, allegedly entered the Radio City Lounge (the oldest continuously operating Gay bar west of the Mississippi, open on State Street since the 1940s) and told the bartender on duty, Larry Pacheco, "you must not like working very much or else you would find a job anywhere else, because I'm going to nail the damn doors closed if it's the last thing I do." Similar threats were also received by staff at the Sun Tavern. The Gay community formally appealed to the the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to assist them in fighting these policies. [131B]

As the Salt Lake community geared up to end police harassment, Gay men in San Francisco decided the time had come to share a message of acceptance and advocacy of homosexuals through music. In October 1978, 115 Gay men met for the first rehearsal of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, the first such musical group in the world. One of the men at the first rehearsal was Gerald Pearson, a Gay Mormon originally from Utah. Carol Lynn Pearson records in Goodbye, I Love You that "Gerald learned that a group was forming called the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. He immediately joined." Carol Lynn went to their premiere on December 20, 1978, for a beautiful and profoundly moving Christmas concert. After the performance Gerald introduced his ex-wife to a man named Tom who had been a Mormon bishop until 1977 and now was a member of the Gay men's choir. Gerald humorously informed Carol Lynn that "there's a whole group of us [Mormons] in the chorus. We're sort of the Tabernacle Choir section." Leonard Matlovich, the famous Gay ex-Mormon Air Force Sergeant, was also a member of the Gay Men's Chorus in its infancy.



The San Francisco Gay's Men Chorus, 2003

Carol Lynn reports that "the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus became his home" and in 1980 Gerald Pearson became co-chairman of the choir, mainly responsible for fundraising and scheduling concert halls. The chorus soon began preparations for its first national tour in June 1981. The chorus became Gerald's "mission, his hope, his gift to the world....It would build bridges, Gerald was certain. It would help destroy prejudice." Despite bomb threats and strikes by the teamsters who refused to deliver the programs for the performances, "reviews were glowing, opinions were changing, families were being reunited." Fourteen choruses were immediately formed across the country as a result. In 1982, thirteen Gay men in Utah formed the Salt Lake Men's Choir, which is now comprised of fifty singers and has gained a wonderful reputation and become a staple in the musical landscape of the intermountain west. Tragically, 42 year old Gerald Pearson died from AIDS in his ex-wife's arms in 1984. Carol Lynn Pearson's 1986 publication about her husband's life and death in Goobye I Love You is perhaps the single most important event in the history of homosexuality and Mormonism. Her account finally softened the hearts and opened the minds of so many Mormons that its significance cannot be underrated. [131C]

"ACCIDENTS OF NATURE"? - MORMON DOCTRINE & TRANSGENDERISM

The LDS Church's stance opposing transgenderism, transsexuality, and transvestism is clear: Spencer W. Kimball twice made uninformed remarks disparaging transsexuality in 1974. At BYU on September 17, 1974, Kimball gave an address called "Be Ye Therefore Perfect" (which he also delivered to the University of Utah Institute of Religion on January 10, 1975) in which he stated that "we're appalled to find an ever-increasing number of women who want to be sexually men and many young men who wish to be sexually women. What a travesty!** I tell you that, as surely as they live, such people will regret having made overtures toward the changing of their sex." At October General Conference that same year, Kimball gave a speech entitled "God Will Not Be Mocked" in which he claimed that the "high purposes of life are damaged and destroyed by the growing unisex theory. God made man in his own image, male and female made he them. With relatively few accidents of nature, we are born male or female. The Lord knew best. Certainly, men and women who would change their sex status will answer to their Maker." Here Kimball makes some room for intersexed people (those born having reproductive organs and/or the chromosones of both sexes - his "accidents of nature") but those who know that their external sex does not match their internal sex are at cross-purposes with God, in his view.

[**N.B. Humorously the word "travesty" comes from "transvestite", although I doubt Kimball knew this.]

Victor L. Brown Jr., DSW (son of the Presiding Bishop who kicked the Salt Lake Human Rights Convention out of the Hotel Utah in 1977) reported the following story at the first convention of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists (AMCAP) in 1975:

I had a unique experience in this regard with a person who wished to have an operation to change his sex. He was a returned missionary, a father, and an extremely capable, talented individual. He went to President Kimball and spent many sessions with him....and over a period of several months to other church leaders throughout the western United States. It was quite a saga as he went from community to community seeking answers. He indicated that he had been obsessed with these attitudes, although he had never acted out, over the majority of his lifetime. When I met him he told me his story of 25 or 30 years of struggling with this issue. I was sort of overwhelmed with what a great fellow he was. I thought it showed tremendous strength to have never given in. He finally reached the crisis point where he just couldn't continue any further. His wife had divorced him. He had lost his children and he was broke. He was a high living person which hurt him a lot. He was, at that point, where he had to do something. So President Kimball, in his special Christianity, arranged for a blessing from President Lee [Harold B. Lee, President of the LDS Church from mid-1972 until his death in December 1973], and I was privileged to be part of the circle. But before President Lee gave the blessing he spent twenty minutes rebuking the man in a kind but firm way. I confess, I sat there and thought, "President Lee, you don't understand. This is a strong fellow. He made a magnificent effort." I was bright enough, though, not to say anything. Then President Lee gave the blessing and rebuked him a little further. It was a beautiful blessing. He made specific promises. Then we went up to President Kimball's office and President Kimball gave him specific instructions. President Kimball didn't interfere with his free agency. He said, "I'll be able to help you if you will do these several things," and he listed them. While I was there, President Kimball called a stake president in another city and arranged for an appointment for that man. As we were leaving President Kimball's office, I was still a little concerned about President Lee's approach. However, I watched this man over the next 3 years and I watched his former wife's life and the children. I came to know her very well. They were from another state, but circumstances brought us together. I found, of course, that President Lee was inspired; he was absolutely correct. This man had put up what might be called a commendable struggle, but he was so turned inward and had become so self-focused that he could not think of anyone else but himself. And then a lot of other things began to make sense. I helped him move once, and I had helped him pack his clothing. He wore clothes that I could never afford. His indulgence in himself in every way was total to the exclusion of his very attractive and loving wife and his lovely children - to the exclusion of any consideration, frankly, except his need to assume the woman's role, so that he could be taken care of. He had no real homosexual tendencies. He was just self-centered. There was no psychological or emotional justification for the change of sex, and President Lee had seen that as an inspired Priesthood leader. [131D]

As with Brown's reaction noted here ("he had no real homosexual tendencies"), Mormon authorities consistently have conflated homosexuality and transsexuality, often speaking about "gender confusion" when addressing homosexuality, or, like Brown, they inaccurately speak of a transsexual's "homosexuality".

Three years later, on March 5, 1978, Boyd Packer gave his "To the One" speech at a BYU fireside. Although the speech was mainly on homosexuality, he did briefly diverge into the topic of transsexuality, unleashing strange and unfounded theories about its etiology and development (and, as usual in Mormon rhetoric, conflating it with homosexuality), especially invoking narcissism:

It is normal for a male to want to become more masculine, or for a female to want to become more feminine. But one cannot increase masculinity or femininity by deviate physical contact with one of his own gender. There are many variations of this disorder, some of them very difficult to identify and all of them difficult to understand. When one projects himself in some confused role-playing way with those of the same gender in an effort to become more masculine or more feminine, something flips over and precisely the opposite results. In a strange way, this amounts to trying to love yourself. A male, in his feelings and emotions, can become less masculine and more feminine and confused. A female can become, in her emotions, less feminine and more masculine and confused. Because the body cannot change, the emotional part may struggle to transform itself into the opposite gender. Then an individual is on a hopeless, futile quest for identity where it can never be achieved. There is even an extreme condition in which some individuals, in a futile search, will undergo so-called “change” operations in an effort to restructure their identity and become whole. Do not even consider that. That is no answer at all! That has eternal, permanent consequences. If an individual becomes trapped somewhere between masculinity and femininity, he can be captive to the adversary and under the threat of losing his potential godhood. (pp. 7-8)

In 1979, a wealthy Mormon Elder (having been a missionary in Argentina) in his mid-30s and living in Orange County, California decided to undergo gender reassignment surgery to become a woman, calling herself Kristi Independence Kelly. She was subsequently excommunicated from the LDS Church, although she fought this at every level. One biogrpahy of Kelly, written by a friend named Kay Brown - herself a transsexual - claims that Kristi Kelly owned a financial company called the Sunshine Group, employing some 500 people, many of whom were Mormons. After getting a separation from her wife, Kristi fell in love with another transsexual named Liz Thomas and Liz was hired to be the Director of Advertising for the Sunshine Group. Taking advantage of the church crisis brought on by the feminist movement of the late 1970s, Kristi threatened to start a "feminist branch" of the Mormon Church "and take her many supporters with her", althought this alleged threat never materialized. At the same time, Kristi's ex-wife refused to allow Kristi to see their three daughters so Kristi took the matter to the courts. Unfortunately in June 1980 Ms. Kelly lost the case and she was not allowed to see her daughters again, because, as a friend of hers noted, the court felt that Kristi, "as a transsexual person, is now unsuitable as a parent because she deviates from the 'accepted' norms of parenthood in the father role." However this didn't stop the court from assessing her $25,000 a year in child support. Kristi then became "a prominent cultural figure in the Hollywood scene". One month after her excommunication, Kristi, an accomplished pilot who owned her own corporate plane, died when the plane she was piloting crashed in northern California. Another transsexual onboard (apparently not her partner Liz) also died in the crash. Members of the Los Angeles transsexual community immediately began circulating rumors that Danites (an early Mormon secret paramilitary vigilante group, which almost certainly no longer exists) had assassinated her, since some of her plane mechanics were allegedly faithful Mormons upset by her growing dissidence and apostacy. While I strongly doubt the current existence of Danites, in recent years Mormons Lance Wood and Russell Henderson have tortured to death Gay men (Gordon Ray Church, and Matthew Shepard respectively) in horrific hate-based crimes. In addition, Tracy Val Kendrick and Shayne E. Rhodes, two large teenage LDS football players from Logan, Utah, also nearly beat to death bisexual Utah State University student Harold Dean Hawker (who weighed less than 120 lbs) with their fists and boots in 1989, leaving him naked in a gravel pit parking lot in the middle of winter. Hawker's hypothermia saved his life although he suffered severe skull fractures, some brain damage, a crushed eye socket, and punctured lungs from the beating, resulting in over $125,000 in uninsured medical bills. (Incidentally, the LDS church excommunicated Hawker for his bisexuality, but not his assailants for their brutal crimes against him.) The two youths only served three-year sentences for their heinous crimes. Therefore while the Danites might no longer exist, the accusations that Kristi Kelly died as a result of "rogue" Mormon intervention may have some truth to them. [132]



ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL POLICIES AT BYU (1957-1980)

Meanwhile, problems had been brewing at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University because private policies developed during the late 1950's through the 1970's began to receive public criticism both by students and the national press, influenced in part by the rise of the Lesbian and Gay liberation movement. BYU's response to homosexuality is important for several reasons: its large (and surprisingly open) Gay and Lesbian population; its semi-open bureaucracy which has allowed selected important documents concerning homosexuality to surface for the public; and the tension created by religion and academia which provides interesting (and recently, traumatic) dilemmas for the people who work, teach, and study there. Close examination of policies, practices, and attitudes regarding homosexuality at BYU reveals the homophobic mechanisms which were created, reproduced, modified, and sustained (even when unethical and/or illegal) by church and university leaders, sometimes even at the expense of great criticism from external sources. BYU and church administrations have operated behind doors, carefully and deliberately attempting to eradicate "the Queer experience" without even once challenging the supposition that homosexuality (desire and/or practice) might not be an illness, abnormality, sin, or crime at all. Because Mormon apostles comprise BYU's board of trustees (with only one or two exceptions), the attitudes of the church hierarchy directly affected BYU's policies. However, because BYU is also an academic institution where free enquiry is encouraged, at least in principle, the school's policies on homosexuality have changed over the course of time. Thus BYU has in turn influenced the church's position on homosexuality like no other "outside" institution.



Drag Burlesque by BYU Social Unit, ca. 1930

Prior to the 1950s, Gay life at BYU was surprsingly open and unrepressed. Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual students and faculty enjoyed good rapport with each other and relatively healthy amount of freedom in their lives. Earl B. Kofoed, a Gay student at the"Y" from 1946-1948, has reported extensively on the social network that thrived on campus for LGB people. Both women and men formed a tightly-knit group, the women from athletics and social work, and the men mainly from the campus French Club. Kofoed reported to me in a 1989 interview that Dr. Leona Holbrook, the first Chair of the women's Physical Education Department at BYU (serving from 1937-1975, died in 1980), was a Lesbian active in this social group. Holbrook was an extraordinary individual who was extremely well-respected at BYU, and received numerous international honors and awards for her contributions to athletics in higher education (especially for women). Among her many honors, Holbrook was the first woman ever appointed to the Board of the US Olympic Committee, and was voted Woman of the Year at BYU for three years. She still ranks as one of the top ten best professors ever to teach at the Y. Her enduring legacy is witnessed by the annual "Leona Holbrook Spirit of Sport Award" given to one senior female athlete on campus who exemplifies "the true spirit of sport in athletics and life". [Click here for a brief biography in PDF of this extraordinary Mormon Lesbian.]



Dr. Leona Holbrook of BYU wearing 1940's "Lesbian chic"

[Click for larger image]

Earl Kofoed also informed me that the group received a semi-official nod from LDS church president George Albert Smith, when two of their number, Kent Goodridge Taylor (1925-2002) and his lover Richard Snow, met with Smith in the Spring of 1948. President Smith merely told the two men to live their lives together honorably and God would accept them. They eagerly reported this strong affirmation of support to the group, bringing them all even closer together. Unfortunately this time of a Gay "Camelot" at BYU was all too brief and the advent of the 1950s would bring a severe change to the campus. (I also report here that Jay Bell, who worked with "Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons" on amassing archival and bibliographic materials on homosexuality and Momronism, reportedly found that in 1951, "the editor of BYU’s student newspaper wrote of members of 'a small group of homosexuals,' including a president of the LDS married branch, and a star basketball player", as quoted at http://www.utahstonewallhistoricalsociety.com/welcome_files/Page1685.html)



BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson

Arch-homophobe

The single person most responsible for the harsh, discriminatory campus environment that began at BYU in the 1950s was Ernest L. Wilkinson, a rabid anti-Communist and arch-conservative lawyer, who became BYU president in October 1951. He could be a vicious and tyrannical man (he himself admitted that he was "too blunt, not tactful with people, and impatient"), disliked by many of his faculty (who pejoratively called him "Ernie the Attorney" behind his back), and who especially delighted in humiliating women, harping ad infinitum on the length of their sk