Brilliant interview, Flo and Kyle! Flo, thank you for sharing what I know from experience to be an excruciating journey. The insight and understanding you’ve earned through very hard work are inspiring and moving. Kyle, as always, you handled this difficult topic with grace and sensitivity. I understand that you didn’t want this episode to become a giant dart pointed at the Mormon church, but they must bear the burden and the responsibility for the paradigm they have established that denies people their own human reality. Society plays a huge role, as well, but the LDS church has taken those restrictive norms for human sexuality and has amplified them and turned them into a bludgeon intended to pummel and shame its members into compliance. The damage toll is in human lives.
Thank you for taking the time to listen, I agree with you that Kyle handled this interview beautifully. I went into the interview wanting to share the other side of the story that is often forgotten. I am also aware that many of the people featured on this podcast Are the LGBTQIA person in the mixed orientation marriage. It really is about the organizations, the systems. There is pain on both sides, and both sides deserve healing. Society in church may easily discard the LGBTQIA individual, but they need to know they are discarding so much more than just one person
Thank you for welcoming us from the outside of mormon. Christian midwest upbringing and very backwards thinking bible belt people. I really enjoy these stories. I was married and 35 and never had a clue who I really was.
I think that is many of us, especially in the LDS faith, when we are told to marry so young. Coming to know myself has been the best gift and one that allows my children the beauty to investigate their own lives and desires. Thanks for listening.
I feel this so deeply (around 35:00 with your 10 year old daughter being suicidal). My daughter became extremely depressed at 12 when she entered YW. They were telling her she had to stay at home and just lose herself in her husband & kids. She created a summer business at 12 where she was bringing in a lot of money, she had dreams of becoming a business woman. They said she couldn’t. So, I went against the Mormon god and chose my daughter. I told her she didn’t have to go to Wednesday night YW/YM anymore. In the same military on-post building at Ft. Irwin, CA where they met (and we met for church, a shared building with other denominations), she started going to “Jump for Jesus.” The Mormon kids entered the building and turned right. The non-denominational kids entered the building and turned left. I followed her in the very first time in case she got flack from the Mormons. She loved going to the youth program, her severe depression went away. Of course the ward members shunned us at church, and if they saw us in public like at the grocery store, we passed within inches of each other and they wouldn’t look at me or say anything. To me that’s a sign of a cult, when you choose to believe or do different, and you are shunned. I started realizing that my life long depression started in YW at 12. I had wanted to be a pediatric heart surgeon, I was told my job was to get married as fast as possible, and have as many kids as fast as possible. I did end up going to nursing school when my kids were older, and the doctors that I worked with in the hospital asked why in the world I didn’t become a doctor, because my diagnostic skills were fantastic. My daughter is now almost 39, and is an extremely successful business woman. A financial advisor. She has a wonderful husband, and they waited five years to have their first of three children. So that they could have a well built foundation with their marriage before they had kids. I advised both my kids to wait five years before they brought children into a marriage. And they both have very strong marriages because of it. Me? I divorced and married several times before I finally came out of the closet at 44 as gay. I’m currently married to the love of my life. 🏳️🌈 The Mormon church, of course excommunicated me, giving me a one-way ticket to hell (outer darkness). If I could’ve been like your daughter at 10 years old and had a supportive system, a family unit and church (like the Unity church), I would’ve become a doctor, come out of the closet much sooner, not been suicidal for decades, married a woman, and adopted children or used artificial insemination. I have tons and tons of trauma from growing up Mormon. I am only 45 minutes into your story. I really hope you free your family and yourself from this tight little fake perfection box. I experienced a lot of prejudice, since I could only have two children, and lost five to miscarriage. There’s too much judgmentalness if you’re not this perfect white, heterosexual, upper middle class family.
You are also kind,@katboss! Just now getting to the comments. I can relate to you on so many other levels as well. I too had wanted to go to medical school but it was not ‘family conducive’. I recently attended a group for late in life lesbians and absolutely adore them. I am still not sure where I sit sexually but I feel so much safer with them than I have with anyone in years. You were amazing to have had that wisdom to allow your daughter to leave the church. I imagine the journey was harder for you in someways than for me in allowing your daughter to go to non-denominational church activity. The children nowadays are so much more aware of that the world is bigger than anything we were taught before. Thank you for taking the time to share your story with me. Hearing of how your child turned out and how you have a happy relationship with someone else gives me great hopes for my own future. Much love
37:29 - 41:14 amazingly touching part that shreds the grooming argument. She was homeschooled, surrounded by Mormon belief system , no phone and came out to Mom at the age of 10. Thats a raw and natural as it gets. Thank you so much for sharing this story. Flo, you're making me cry.
Thank you for listening to my story. I am always so frustrated with how religion expects us to give up our authority and gives narratives that we are too weak minded to know our own selves. The line about social media’s influence was always particularly aggravating. For all the conspiracies of teachers, trying to indoctrinate children, the truth is that we have tried to indoctrinate ourselves, that we have no authority over our own lives.
Exactly! You would think then that when these patterns occur so regularly that society might choose to listen🙄 thank you for taking time to listen to my story
What a Christ-like attitude, not to lay blame on your husband or on yourself. The church authorities should be sued for every cent they've got because their attitudes have denied both of you a great part of your life.
The cost to both our lives, and our children’s is high. We cannot put a monetary value on it and fighting against such a wealthy organization. Would be like an ant trying to move a giant. In choosing to do this podcast, I had hoped to draw on others so that they might help change the narrative in society and in religion. Perhaps a colony of ants will be able to finally make the difference. Thank you for taking the time to listen.
I applaud you, for choosing to listen to stories that may not relate to your own. I think it is a mark of maturity when we seek to understand someone else’s worldview. Thank you for taking time to listen to my story.
I'm not Mormon, and have never been, but she is such a classy lady. And tolerant of others. Not what I think of as Mormonism. Blacks weren't equal until the 70's, right? Only when their status was challenged because of being racist, as I understand it.
Omg, the discussion regarding race in the Mormon church would be a whole another episode just for my tiny experience 😜 sidenote on tolerance: I think when we see the darkness in ourselves and can honestly acknowledge it openly, we can see each others a humans trying to ‘be’ and leave the judgement behind. Judgment is an ever shifting beast of burden
I'm a Christian. and believe that, we shouldn't judge others. Listening to this Dear sister pains me. This was wrong from the beginning. We as women should stop trying to please man, and trying to fix tham. We should put our feelings first. Putting yourself first, is self-love. Not selfish. You were never happy, but you stayed, to fix him, that was unfair to yourself.....when a gay man comes out, Ahhh his very brave WTF. Know one cares about us women. The damages, depression, etc...here in Australia 70% married man, are gay. Women have know one to call, there is know help for women. My Dear Friend was married for 10 years, he was always unhappy, abusive, bullying her, and zero intimacy. She felt very unattractive, he use to tell her, that she was fat. She lost weight, and became size 8. But still he didn't touch her. His male friends never liked her at all. His boss use to call him, more than 10 times a day. She couldn't understand why. She became suicidal...I had to look after her 24/7. Her hair was falling off, she got bigger and bigger.... she ate chocolate every night, because she was rejected by the man she really love. She's now free, beautiful, healthy, and moved on with her beautiful self. DO NOT MARRY A GAY MAN. You can never chanbe him. His just using you to make family....that pain doesn't go away. But it gets better.....God is a Healer my sister. Turn to God, not pastor, not ma..seek God yourself. May God be with you
Sexual orientation is on a spectrum. I cannot say for him if the relationship is ‘right/wrong’ nor do I care to. All I can say is that no one should have their ‘eternal salvation’ held hostage and be forced to act in any one way to have social or spiritual safety.
