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‘AS MY FATHER MADE ME’
Gay Mormon leader Mitch Mayne helps heal the rift between his communities
By Nick Mattos
PQ Monthly
Mitch Mayne is led by his faith that he is whole, just
the way his Heavenly Father made him. As an openly gay
leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,
Mayne has endeavored to bridge the divide between his
two communities — and his efforts have
resulted in many Mormon communities
discontinuing their discipline of LGBTQ
members and instead embracing them
as they are.
“When I came out to my parents at
age 16,” he recalls of his life growing up
in Idaho, “my mother told me, ‘It would
have been better if you’d been born dead
than gay.’”
While this reaction — and a subsequent
unsuccessful effort to force him into
“reparative therapy” — was hard for Mayne
initially, he has since come to a place of forgiveness
and understanding, particularly
with his mother’s reaction.
“What I realized in retrospect,” he
explains, “were that these weren’t the words
of a mother who hated her son. These were the words of a
Mormon mom who wanted the best for me, who had been
through some very difficult things in her life and had really
internalized the message that gay people were doomed to
live short, hard, brutal lives of debauchery.”
Mayne moved from Idaho to the San Francisco Bay Area
12 years ago; there, he was stunned to discover a radically
different experience of being gay and LDS.
“I had an amazing life for a gay Mormon man! I was celebrated
by my ward for who I was. It wasn’t uncommon
on Sundays for someone to come up to me and say ‘Hey!
There’s a play by [LDS author and activist] Carol Lynn Pearson
playing in the city about gay Mormons! You should
come with me!’”
During this time, Mayne met a partner who was not a
member of the Church; fellow members were highly supportive
of the couple, and he continued to be an active
member of the Mormon community.
In 2008, Proposition 8 threatened to destroy the life that
Mayne worked hard to build. The California state constitutional
amendment, which defined marriage as a union
between one man and one woman, was ardently supported
by numerous religious organizations, perhaps most aggressively
by the LDS Church.
“When Prop 8 hit, it was a really divisive time for Mormons
in California,” Mayne recalls, “and we lost a lot of members
over it. I remember hearing the letter [that
the LDS Church issued in support of Proposition
8] read in Sacrament Meeting, and
getting up to walk out of the church.”
However, the biggest impact for Mayne
was at home. “My partner, who wasn’t a
member, … started to really dislike the
church. When Prop 8 hit, our home life
began to crumble, because I was committed
to the church and my faith but also
to him.” The relationship ultimately dissolved
over the religious tensions caused
by the issue.
However, soon after the passage of
Proposition 8, Mayne’s prayers began to
be answered in a most surprising way. “I
was approached by the Stake Presidency
[a regional leader] in the East Bay, who said
that he was familiar with my story and my Mormon history;
he was trying to put together a series of programs that would
mend the fence after Proposition 8 and they wanted my help
with it.”
These meetings — 16 in all, in locations throughout
Northern California — sought to integrate the gay and
Mormon communities and to open up a dialogue after the
strains of the bitter battles that had just occurred.
Soon afterward, Mayne was asked to become a regional
leader of the church himself. “Don Fletcher [the San Francisco
Stake President] sat me down and said, ‘I want you
to be a conduit between the LDS community and the gay
community,’” Mayne recalls.
Mayne’s appointment to the local church leadership
marked a sea change in the experience of gay Mormons
in the area.
“In San Francisco,” he explains, “we haven’t changed doctrine,
but we’ve been adamant that we’re not excommunicating
people for being gay or transgender anymore. We have
Photo courtesy of Mayne Frame Photography
LGBTQ members who have partners, who are dating, who
are single — but no one is under the threat of discipline. Our
job is to bring people closer to our Savior, and we’re not doing
our job if we’re kicking people out of our church.”
The actions of the San Francisco stake have had significant
impact in the larger Mormon community. “Since we’ve
become so public and big about what we’re doing, we’re
seeing other wards across the states emulate us — there are
wards in D.C., Virginia, Arizona, and elsewhere that have
adopted this sensibility. … There is a recognition in many
Mormon hearts that excommunication of LGBT people is
simply not a Christlike thing to do.”
Mayne travels worldwide working with LDS leaders
and communities — including local Mormons in Portland
and Beaverton — helping them to better serve their queer
members and ensure that they feel safe and comfortable
in the church.
“The truth of the matter,” Mayne states bluntly, “is that
Mormons are kind of weird, and we’ve been persecuted by
society. The same is true of the gay community. So, when we
do that to our own, it stymies and troubles me greatly. That’s a
critique for both communities: we have to learn to be kinder to
our own as well as each other. The LGBT community is really
the first to call for unity, equality, and inclusion, yet there is so
much anger towards the Mormon community that we have
a difficult time extending it to the church. We need to be, as
gay people, more loving, more kind, more Christlike, and be
what we seek to achieve. … Yes, the Mormons did a bad thing,
and I think Prop 8 and everything around it was one of the
most un-Christlike things the church has done. This doesn’t
mean that the gay community has the right or the necessity
to hate the church. Instead, we need to open up the dialogue
and help them see how we are so much alike.”
Ultimately, Mayne sees his journey — as a gay man and a
Latter-Day Saint — as an expression of faith in a very present
and personal God.
“I know that my Savior lives,” he says as he bears his testimony
of faith, “and He knows me better than anyone. He
is my very best friend. There is nothing I can’t take to that
relationship — my successes, my failures, my challenges
and my fears, my sex life, my dating life, my friendships,
my career. Everything. Everything is part of Him and that
relationship with Him. All we have to open the door and
let Him in, regardless of who we are.”
FEMINIST ICON GLORIA STEINEM TALKS ABOUT SHARED STRUGGLES
By Erin Rook
PQ Monthly
Feminist icon and Ms. magazine cofounder
Gloria Steinem was in town Oct. 6
for NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon’s Annual Gala.
PQ Monthly had a chance to sit and chat with
her briefly (along with young journalists from
the Tubman News Network) before the big
event. Steinem shared her thoughts on the
importance of identity-specific spaces and
the connections between the women’s rights
and LGBTQ rights movements.
A former student of the Harriet Tubman
Leadership Academy for Young Women (the
recently closed all-girls middle school),
asked about the importance of a women’sonly
education:
“I think it’s very helpful at some time in
our lives, if we come from a group that has
been peripheralized in some way for whatever
reason — whether it’s age or race or
sexuality or sex or class or whatever it is —
to be central, to find out what it’s like to be
central. To be together and able to tell our
stories and discover that our experiences
are not our fault — that it happens to other
people too.”
PQ Monthly asked Steinem to speak the
connections between feminism and LGBTQ
rights activism:
“Well, first I think that what is still not
well enough understood is that what’s called
the women’s movement and what’s called
the LGBTQA — A, we have to include allies
— movement is organically connected.
Sometimes when I’m on campus people
will say, ‘Why are the same groups against
birth control and lesbians?’ So I think we
need to understand that the hierarchical,
patriarchal view of life is that sexuality
is only moral and acceptable when it’s
directed towards having children and is
inside patriarchal marriage. So the gay and
lesbian movements and the women’s movement
have always come together because
we are all trying to free human sexuality to
be a form of expression — not only the way
we procreate.
“I fear sometimes our adversaries know
our connections better than we do. Otherwise
people wouldn’t be asking that question.
We need to know we’re not alone so
we need to be able to speak our experience
and know that
other people are
having it, too.
... It’s just very
important to be
able to see that
there is both
shared experience
and shared
opposition.”
St e i n e m i s
currently working
on a memoir
called “Road to
the Heart: America
As if Everyone Mattered.” More details are
available at gloriasteinem.com.
Photo by Jules Garza, PQ Monthly
pqmonthly.com October/November 2012 • 13