Original subtitles

Should have gotten my nails done.

Docuseries people don't care as much as "Housewives. "

Lately, it seems like Mormons

are having a mainstream moment.

I think that a lot of people right now

are associating Mormonism with MomTok and these Mormon wives.

And so that's kind of changed the landscape.

Really, the very first hugely

marketable influencers were Mormon.

Get ready with me using SHEGLAM products only.

- And then it was Pink Peonies, Rachel Parcell,

Cara Loren, Hannah Neeleman, Ballerina Farm.

Conservative values, traditional homemaking roles,

just really a gendered family structure

where they're home with the kids.

It's intoxicating to watch,

because it seems so simple and pure.

Just got done milking.

Got about 2 gallons.

And they seem so happy.

And it seems like, oh, this is how it was always meant to be,

like watching an episode of "Leave it to Beaver. "

That's not how it really is, you know?

That's not really what's happening.

It's a wolf in sheep's clothing,

because it's exactly what the church is going for.

You wanna have all of this?

Join the Mormon church. You can have it too.

That wasn't my experience.

There's a huge misconception about Mormonism,

that it is all unicorns and rainbows

and functioning families.

But the truth is, the church has done

a really good job of shaming and sidelining its critics.

What that's created is this marginalized community

that want to be screaming from the watchtower,

but anyone who has a contrary opinion

is shut out and silenced.

I mean, if people knew

what was really going on in the church,

I think it would shock people.

- At the tone, please record your message.

- Hey, Heather. My name is David Matheson.

You don't know me.

Anyway, I'm hoping- I know that you're

talking to people about their experiences with the church.

Well, I've got one. I hope we can meet,

and I'd really look forward to it.

Thanks. Bye.

I'm headed over to this man David Matheson's house.

The reason he was reaching out to me

is to share his experiences and share stories.

David Matheson was one of the pioneers

of the gay conversion therapy movement.

He sent me this voicemail last night,

and there were a lot of things that I just

felt immediately intrigued by.

He ran a program that was very, very well-known

in the church called Evergreen, which everyone knew,

like, Evergreen, what Evergreen meant.

It meant Evergay,

and you went there to, you know, try to change it.

About five years ago, David came out as gay,

divorced his wife, and denouncing the church.

The guy that was teaching conversion therapy

for and on behalf of the church was actually gay all along.

Nobody talks about negative things within the church.

We don't discuss it.

We don't, you know, dig deep.

We don't investigate anything.

So while I heard about all of these programs

and even had friends that, you know, suffered

from same-sex attraction-

I hate even saying that, but that's the language

that we used as members of the church.

We didn't say, my husband is gay.

We said, he's got this trial and tribulation from God.

You struggle with swear words, sister?

You struggle with coffee?

Well, my husband struggles with sex with men.

I can't imagine the ramifications.

He has to face thousands of young men

showing up on his door, saying, you know, what the fuck?

What life event made him realize that he had to leave?

And I just really wanna ask him

how that shaped the way he views, you know,

his whole life.

I never thought it was gonna look like this,

where people were looking to me to be, like, the public voice

of Mormon critical thought.

What is it, flopping? Or is it erect?

It's erect. Yours is crooked, though.

It works the same in the end.

I don't really hide a lot from who I am on "Real Housewives. "

Putting my life on TV and exposing all of it

and kind of being forced to leave my faith

and talk about it publicly shaped who I became.

I don't wanna ever take away from you, like,

our faith and our Mormonism.

It's come down to where I'm just like,

I owe it to these girls to, like,

be so honest about where I'm at.

And that's been both, like, incredibly transformative,

you know, but also, it's been really hard.

Do you hear from Mormons around Salt Lake City

who are mad about what you say about it?

Yeah, I do. I hear from them a lot.

A lot of them are my family members.

So the only time I've really ever spoken publicly

about, like, a lot of my problems

with the faith outside of the television show

was when I wrote the book "Bad Mormon. "

Has there been any response from the church?

The church is suing me for use of the trademark.

So there's been some- I'm currently in litigation.

There's not a lot of mainstream Mormons

that have written critical memoirs of their faith.

The outreach from former Mormons

and other people does not stop.

There's just an endless sea of people

who have been hurt by the church,

and no one's done anything about it.

We were going to an institution that was homophobic.

It was bigoted. It was misogynistic.

And there was no way for me to explain

that away to my children.

What fascinates me is the church's ability

to get away with it and for everyone

that speaks out against it

to just end up screaming into the void.

Don't need to, like, give the whole spiel.

We're just gonna have...

- But, like, the book became a vehicle for me

to meet people all over the world

with whom the message had resonated.

I'm here to support my other bad Mormons.

- That was the first time I had an awareness

of the platform and the position I was in.

I get DMs. I get emails.

I get stopped at the mall.

I get stopped at the grocery store.

I hear over and over and over how the Mormon church

has affected and hurt so many people.

My kids were taken.

I went against my bishop, asking for help,

and he would just rake me over the coals every month.

And she told me she would rather have

a dead son than a gay son.

We were told that we were something called Lamanites.

They were cursed with a dark skin.

And he taught those who practice

in interracial marriages should be killed,

along with their kids.

They took the baby away. They wouldn't let me see him.

I tried to burn the memory

of what he looked like in my mind

so that I wouldn't forget what he looked like.

- I just had this onslaught of an ocean of pain

and an ocean of trauma.

I hear about everything, from adoption services

and the way LDS social services has hurt people,

how eternal marriage and patriarchy has hurt people,

how conversion therapy has hurt people.

The roles of women-

divorce, abuse, betrayal,

misogyny, bigotry, racism.

Every DM, I wanted to, like, meet the person in person

and, like, weep, like biblical women weeping,

just, like, weeping for what was gone

and what we had hoped for

and what was lost and what was gained.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

is considered a mainstream religion.

We believe in concepts like Heavenly Father

and Jesus Christ and heaven and hell.

But beyond that, we believe that

there are three separate levels of heaven,

and you have to live a life of perfection

in order to achieve the celestial kingdom

and live together with your family forever.

The Mormon doctrine lays out a path to perfection.

You are asked to keep very, very specific rules

in order to be purged of all sin

and be perfect and with God.

A man has to marry a woman and have children

and live together forever,

making sure you meet all of the standards of the church.

You know, your church attendance,

your worthiness, your purity.

Not just sexual purity, but purity-not smoking,

not drinking, not drinking coffee,

not swearing, not looking at porn,

not looking at R-rated movies.

Devout Mormons masquerade and appear

to be fun-loving, easygoing soccer moms and dads.

We don't wear any of our devotion externally.

We have it all internally.

Secret, sacred, symbolized garments,

secret, sacred temple rituals,

secret, sacred handshakes among members,

our own language, our own way of addressing each other,

our own rules, our own laws.

Everyone associated with Mormonism

struggles with all these rules,

because if you break them, you risk being ostracized

by your church, your community,

and even your family.

The church projects this image of inclusivity,

acceptance, love, humanitarian service,

and diligence.

But if we were to take the PR spin off of all of it,

the doctrine is, at its core, homophobic, misogynistic,

and deeply, deeply bigoted.

A year or two ago,

I was still feeling entrenched in shame

that I chose the lights and glamour

over the dutiful role of devout Mormon mother.

I never wanted to, like, leave or speak out

or criticize the Mormon church.

If the Mormon church wasn't fucked up,

I would have stayed.

But after the onslaught of people

that have reached out to me, I just

feel like I can't look away.

The time is now to uncover all of these secrets

and to give voice to all of these atrocities

that are being committed and to say,

not now, never again.

- I grew up with same sex attraction,

but I didn't want it.

I wanted something more than what I was.

So I began on a journey to find the truth

that could help me become a whole man.

I went to seminars and weekend retreats.

I read books. I got married.

Eventually, I became a counselor myself.

Now I find myself here.

I'm 50 years old.

I'm happily married with a thriving family.

I have helped thousands of men in their journeys

to overcome same-sex attraction.

And now I'm here to help you.

- David Matheson has been a pioneer

in the field of overcoming SSA for over 15 years.

Wow!

I think, first of all, I'm overwhelmed

by the arrogance of the whole thing.

Wow, that feels really terrible.

♪ ♪

Oh, my God!

I believed this for a long time.

- Oh, my gosh. - Hi!

Heather.

Oh, my gosh!

I'm so glad to be here.

- Thank you for having me. - Thank you so much. Wow!

This is awesome.

Do you want some coffee?

If you're gonna have some, yeah, I would love some.

Yeah, I made some 'cause I thought you might want some,

and I definitely need some.

Okay. Let me know if that's enough.

Okay.

So when did you start drinking coffee?

This is-I mean, the day you left?

Actually, when the whole thing went down,

when I got outed and all of that...

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Start-so when you got outed?

You were out-like, it wasn't voluntary?

It was not voluntary.

I'd divorced my wife already.

And you divorced her because you said I-

It was time for me to be with a man.

I just couldn't do it with a woman anymore.

So I started dating guys.

And then someone, I guess, texted a gay-

an ex-gay watchdog, a guy who watches guys like me

to see, you know, when we foul up,

and then he's gonna out us.

It was nuts.

Like, instantly, like, overnight.

A bombshell on the conversion therapy world.

A popular Utah therapist, who, for years,

tried to convert gay men

is now looking for a gay partner.

- In Utah, we meet David Matheson,

the intellectual godfather of gay cure therapy.

- People are not born gay. Period. End of discussion.

No one is born gay.

There was no way I was going to accept gay.

It just wasn't gonna happen.

So the guy gives me ten minutes,

and I come up with this super lousy statement.

- Oh, my gosh. - And I give it to him.

And then he puts that out.

And then I'm getting calls from newspapers

and from TV shows.

Well, are you glad you left?

I'm really glad I got out.

I can't even tell you how glad I am that I got out.

So what made you leave? Like-

Pain.

I'm gonna try not to cry a whole lot.

I spent my life being someone I wasn't.

Do you know how hard it is at 62 to look back

and go, for so many years, I believed

and taught something that I now know is completely wrong?

It's really painful when we say, like,

recognizing that you've been living your life

as someone you aren't actually are,

and that you're really good at it.

That's what I wanted to talk to you about.

When I heard your voicemail, what really resonated with me

was that we'd kind of grown up

with the same cult of personality.

- We did. We did. - You know?

We grew up, like, trying our hardest

to be the best Mormon we could be,

despite the obvious deterrents.

- Problem. Yeah. - Yeah.

- The Matheson family goes back

several generations in Mormonism.

I grew up in this area

in a very Mormon-centric universe.

And I ingested it completely.

I was very into studying the scriptures,

diving into the doctrine.

You were raised in a church that taught you

there wasn't such a thing eternally as gay.

The feeling one gets when one reads this stuff is,

gay is bad because it's just disgusting.

This is an unnatural thing.

Do you think God to be that way?

I admitted to myself that I was gay

when I was, like, 23.

The thought was, I could be gay if I want to,

but I don't want to.

23, after you'd served a mission.

After I'd served a mission. I get married.

They tell me you probably don't need

to tell her about the same-sex attraction,

because it's probably just gonna go away.

You told yourself that, or someone-

They told me. My bishop.

And he says, don't worry about it.

That'll go away when you start having...

- Sex. - Normal sex.

- Oh. - People come into the church

with same-sex attraction issues,

and they tell you, stop sinning.

Don't do it.

You should marry a woman, and she'll cure you.

A year later, I'm like, it didn't go away.

A year into our marriage, I told her

that I was attracted to guys.

She cried and said, I love you.

We'll make it work. Let's just keep going.

And so we did.

We were taught that God loves all of His children.

A loving God would not set people up to fail

by making them homosexual.

I must believe that this homosexual thing

is just a phase, and that God has a way to change that.

And so I wanted to become a therapist.

So I started developing my own stuff.

And the idea there was that homosexuality

can be changed if you heal the wounds that caused it.

So shame, trauma, PTSD, all that kind of stuff,

if we heal those wounds, the homosexuality will go away.

Which, I mean, it's that belief

that leads people to conversion therapy, I would think.

- It is. It is. - You know?

So the first thing I was involved with was Evergreen.

So Evergreen started-it was a group of men who were LDS

and were gay and didn't wanna be gay

because they wanted to live the standards of the church.

So they got together, and they started supporting each other.

I got involved just as a participant,

and then I was on their board,

and then I was their executive director.

So I became Mr. Evergreen.

I think our larger society has just swallowed

that if you have homosexual feelings,

you're gay.

And if you're gay, you were born that way.

So Evergreen was this fully LDS group,

and it was pretty intensely Mormonism,

the atonement of Christ,

"you can't be gay" conversion therapy.

I have clients that drive nine hours to see me,

because there's just no one out there doing it,

because it's politically incorrect.

So not only was I a conversion therapist,

but whether we liked it or not, we became the poster couple

for mixed orientation marriage, where one person's homosexual

and one person's heterosexual.

And they're trying to make it work.

Eventually, when I found a few different types

of therapy over the years,

my relationship with my wife did improve.

I don't think I was more attracted to her,

but I was less freaked out, and I was less depressed also.

What we're saying is, we are making it work.

And we were saying that because it was,

except it really wasn't.

But we thought it was.

So Evergreen wasn't organized by the church,

but they were very involved in that.

Well, yeah, I thought they were run by the church.

The church never really supported it openly.

- The support- - What do you mean?

They were supporting me financially

in that bishops still paid for some of their members

to come see me.

The church provided

mental health services for members.

And very often, those mental health services

were paid for by the church.

A bishop is calling.

This guy, we're gonna have to excommunicate him

because he keeps acting out with other guys.

The bishop would give you the money

to attend a conversion therapy.

Yes, because we can't have people in our ward being gay.

I don't know-as a bishop, I don't know what to do,

so we're gonna send him to Matheson.

He's gonna clean up the mess created by the theology,

but we're not admitting that that's what's going on,

- if that makes sense. - Like plausible deniability.

Yeah.

So if I was, like, a 19-year-old kid, Mormon kid,

I'm 99% positive I'm gay-

at the height of your conversion therapy,

what would you have said to me?

As you're describing it now, there's this part of me

that is just, like, on the floor,

'cause I don't even wanna think about it.

- Over time, I realized there were a lot of things

that could be taught or experienced on a group level.

So I helped develop workshops and presentations.

And then one of the big things that I helped develop

was called- is called Journey Into Manhood.

- We return now to something called Journey Into Manhood,

a retreat that claims it can help men

alter their feelings of sexual attraction

for other men.

- It was a huge retreat with a lot of processes.

Look at the outside of this man.

Look at his physical appearance.

We're going to dig into your relationship

with your mom and your dad, and we're gonna try

to find out where the problems are.

And we're gonna try to fix that whole thing,

and you're gonna be straight.

So you think if I come here

and I do everything you're telling me to do,

I will be able to get married and have children

and live the life that I've been told I'm supposed to live.

I would have said, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

We thought we really needed to help them

feel more masculine, which means they needed

to be closer to their father.

They needed more distance from their mother.

The entire client base, they were all there

because their religion told them

it was not okay to be gay.

I would always consider myself a heterosexual man

with just- with a lot of, um, issues.

So in this retreat, you are going to give the person-

an adult person, but this was done sometimes with children-

you're going to give them a rebirth.

You put them under a blanket on the floor,

and then people weigh down the blanket.

- We're pulling the blanket. - They sit.

They're holding the blanket down.

We're sitting on the blanket.

Sitting on it or holding it, right?

And then the guy is supposed to fight his way out.

The belief was that men who are gay

don't have a sense of their own power,

and when they feel more masculine,

they realize that the woman is different from them.

And then they're attracted to her.

Another one was, they wrote this letter

from their "golden father"- in other words,

the father they wish they had.

Was there any sort of belief that, like,

gayness came out of, like, a father wound?

Totally.

That makes me sad. I don't know why.

You want to bring up the trauma

so that you can process and heal it.

Healing that was really helpful.

It changed them from depressed and suicidal

to less depressed and suicidal.

I feel joy.

- I'm in a better place now to become a father

and to become that role model that my children will need.

All of it was reinforcing,

oh, my gosh, they are changing.

I am changing.

I'm not gay after all.

♪ ♪

I feel like you're barely skimming the surface

of what went on at these retreats.

I've heard there's retreats with touch.

I've heard there's retreats with nudity.

And I'm just curious, like, did you do that?

And what was the therapy behind it?

Okay, so let me answer the retreats with nudity part.

There was a retreat that I was involved with

where there was a lot of nudity, right?

Skinny-dipping, processes where you were

kind of breaking out of clothing and the constraints

of having to hide your body.

So there were all these therapeutic intentions

behind them.

The rumors was, yeah, Evergreen means Evergay,

and it's where you go to pretend that you're struggling,

- but to hook up. - So-

I mean, that's what was spoken of hush-hush.

Yeah.

So I did not experience that.

- Really? - Yeah.

So how did that rumor get started?

So hang on. Let me explain.

So I genuinely didn't see that going on at Evergreen.

Did that stuff happen? I'm sure that stuff happened.

- I did hear- - I welcome that stuff.

It seems to me like an Underground Railroad

for the gay community.

Like, I've heard that you could do back rubs,

but shirts had to be on.

And if you went to a special kind of retreat,

shirts could be off, and you'd do back rub chains.

I heard about cuddle parties.

I heard you could hug, but not for longer than a minute.

Uh, no.

Or not until someone had a reaction.

More like 10, 15 minutes.

- You could hug for 10 minutes. - Mm-hmm.

The cuddling, the touch, the holding,

some of it was written into the program,

like men are going to get in small groups,

and one man will hold the other,

and then they'll switch, and then they'll switch again.

Okay, so it was about, they need male touch.

- Let's give them male touch. - They need male touch.

- Right. - Within God's rules.

Within God's rules.

The idea was, holding is okay,

but not holding in a partnership,

and not holding if it's going to get sexual.

It's kind of like letting the cat smell the salmon

and then putting it away in the cupboard.

So it's like, on the one hand, a recognition of truth,

while at the same time,

we're in denial of that same truth.

I mean, just that we would equate

being gay to trauma and wounds and parental failings,

- you know? - Yeah.

You can't heal the gay out of a person.

I have watched for 30 years

how hope turns into bitterness and disappointment,

how people try things that then don't work,

but it takes them a long time to figure out it doesn't work.

♪ ♪

That is so hard to own up to.

- Because? - It's so wrong.

At the time, I genuinely believed it.

I truly did, but it's just so wrong.

When you're raised Mormon,

there's not a future outside of Mormonism.

It is everything.

- A Utah man who was an icon of conversion therapy

now says the practice should be outlawed.

- My coming out was meant to be about me

and about coming into congruity with myself,

about congruity with my wife,

because there was no marriage anymore.

What we were going through, this painful thing

that we were living, as I look back,

I can see the way the pain compounded

year by year by year on both of us.

I tried everything.

And at the end of the day, I couldn't survive.

Like, if there's one message I wanna make sure gets said

over and over and over,

you cannot heal the gay out of a person.

You cannot convert a person from gay to straight.

You cannot pray the gay away.

You just can't.

As hard as it is for you to talk about these practices

that you now have distance and can see the damage

and the pain of all of it,

I mean, I don't think that where we are now

erases what we did then,

but I think it helps us to talk about it.

Yeah.

To say that you spent a majority of your life

not living authentically, that's a painful thing to say.

But does that make your life a sham?

To me, it's like, if you had stayed married,

stayed doing what you were doing,

and then just died with the world never knowing,

that would make your life a sham.

Like, it doesn't matter if you determine

who you are at 18 or at 80.

Like, the day you do, your life stops being a sham, you know?

That's extremely compassionate

for you to say that.

I feel that way.

Who were you most concerned about the fallout

- of your decision? - Her.

- Your wife. - Her.

As it should be.

Yeah, I was ripping her world to absolute pieces.

Someone like her that, like,

married you and had children with you

under the premise that it would lead

to the same promises that you hoped for.

I don't expect your wife to feel or think this immediately,

but you released her and gave her the chance

to stop being a martyr and stop living out of duty

and obligation to her children and to her church

and to her husband, but for herself.

Yeah.

And to hopefully be with a man

who can love her in the way she needed to be loved.

All these years later, here I am now.

I'm in a partnership with a man that, we intend to marry soon.

And of course, with my wife, we have three children.

There are some things I really don't regret

about my younger life, and one of the things I don't regret

is having three amazing kids,

'cause they are beautiful, amazing people.

Looking at my life moving forward,

it's congruent with who I know myself to be.

Mormonism is a cruel culture.

What's weird about Mormonism

is that it's the kindest cruel culture there ever was,

because it does feel like a plushy toy on the outside,

but there's a knife in it.

The younger people, they're in the church going,

I can do this.

The knife's okay.

The knife doesn't hurt that much.

It doesn't feel like abuse,

but a lot of abuse doesn't feel like abuse.

So when I decided to be courageous enough to call you,

it was because I'm this little voice now.

I mean, I used to be a big fish in a tiny pond,

and now I'm a tiny fish in a tiny pond.

And you have a platform.

And I'm watching these kids.

Now they're saying, I'm gonna stay.

I'm in it for the long haul, because scripture power

and the light of Christ.

And I'm terrified because I know what's ahead of them.

The truth is, we both know that these doctrines

and these retreats and these therapeutic practices

are still going on today.

And they're endorsed by the church today.

And I'm kind of over being polite

and pussyfooting around, you know, the church.

They think they're so rich, so powerful, and so immovable

that nobody can effect change.

But no matter how inclusive the church says they are,

- it's not an inclusive church. - It's not.

It's not an inclusive doctrine.

And like you said, it's gonna take people

that were in it deeply saying, this is still going on,

and this is totally harmful, and this has to stop.

And if it's not you that says it,

and it's not me that says it, who's gonna say it?

Who's gonna say it?

Yeah.

- Such a layered experience, meeting David.

You know, I felt immense compassion

and also revulsion at all of it.

And that is kind of, in a nutshell,

what it feels like to have been Mormon for all of your life,

and then to leave it.

We still act as a friend to the church

and as an apologist for the church.

And, "They do a lot of good,"

or, "A lot of what they did was great.

A lot of it was problematic. "

Like, no, it wasn't problematic.

It was fucking destructive, painful, and wrong, and false.

Listening to him tell me these stories of conversion therapy

and justifying it in any way, like,

there was a part of me that left my body and was like,

what the fuck?

Like, this is horrible, ridiculous, systemic abuse.

You were retraumatizing these men.

When he said that they would tell these sweet gay kids

that their gayness was a result of a father wound

or a mother wound- can you imagine being a mom

and, like, you see your child suffering,

and not only do you have no support

and you're not even supposed to speak on it or speak about it,

but you're supposed to reject your child.

And then the reason you're supposed

to reject your child is because you fucked them up

in the first place.

It was like- it was just dripping

with shame and responsibility and causality

that is a full-on lie.

And as we pass this church and say,

you know, visitors welcome, as long as you look,

act, and speak like we do.

A person that grew up in the church

is not allowed that privilege to just become

who they were born to be.

And I never, ever had permission to do that, ever.

We always say, when you know better, you do better.

Well, we know what's going on right now.

That's why it's so important now for people to speak out,

because the church continues on unfettered

by the constraints of the trauma

and pain they're causing.

And every day, it's like, the house is on fire,

and if we don't pull these bodies out,

there's going to be devastation.

- The Mormon church may not be one of the world's

largest religions, but its estimated assets

certainly make it one of the wealthiest.

The Mormon church is worth over $140 billion.

And all that wealth and power is concentrated

in the hands of just a few men-

the Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints and his twelve apostles.

It's just like this multilevel network

run by men, down to just, like,

150 members in a geographical area.

And that's called your local ward.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

owns over 1.7 million acres,

making it the fifth largest landowner

privately in the nation.

- The church also operates a real estate arm,

with temples and churches and seminary buildings

and pastures and farms and fields.

We source all of our own food.

We also have a welfare department,

a humanitarian service department,

and we employ, you know,

hundreds of thousands of people.

You are supposed to give 10% of your income.

That is reconciled once a month,

and at the end of the year,

you're forced to sit in front of your local leader,

who knows how much you've been paying,

and they ask you directly, are you a full tithe payer?

And you have to say yes or no.

- If a destitute family is faced with the decision

of paying their tithing or eating,

they should pay their tithing.

- The church, it's not just a beautiful house of worship

and a different specific religion.

It is an indoctrination that requires, like,

secrecy, power, control, big hammers of shame

and guilt and fear.

And, like, that's just a scenario impossible to escape.

It wasn't like I hit some point in my life

where Mormonism started to be a burden.

From the moment I was aware of it,

it supplanted my identity.

I'm the cradle Mormon.

I was born into the faith.

And I loved being Mormon growing up.

My parents were both from Mormon families.

All of our family rituals and family traditions

and family togetherness was centered around

church activities and our church beliefs.

I had these siblings who were my built-in best friends,

and we were all in on it together.

And I didn't feel like it was fake.

Like, yeah, our family's awesome.

But I also distinctly felt like our family was awesome

because we were Mormon.

Mormonism is a religion based on the principle

that the greatest happiness on Earth

can be found within the family.

And the family is the vehicle by which to grow closer to God

and obtain eternal life.

That belief informed the type of family

I wanted to create for myself.

The second I met someone that was willing...

I knew that I had the capacity to make any marriage work

because I loved God,

I loved being Mormon, I was good at being Mormon.

But I was- but I was very, very wrong.

And about three days into my marriage,

I realized that we were fiercely, deeply incompatible.

I thought he was marrying me for all the reasons he wasn't.

And I was marrying him for all the reasons

he did not wanna be a husband.

Divorce wasn't in my vocabulary.

I didn't know anyone that was divorced, but he did.

My marriage was ending,

and my Mormon dream was shattered too.

And my entire life imploded.

♪ ♪

- Hey. - Hey!

What's going on?

Oh, nothing.

I was just thinking about you.

Oh, as always.

- One of my very best friends is Shane.

And I met him right after my husband moved out

and I was newly separated for the first time.

And he was newly coming out as a gay man.

And he became, like, the most pivotal person

in my journey out of the church.

Shane as a gay man and me as a single woman,

you know, we were both ostracized from the community.

But, you know, we were publicly

very positive about the church,

for fear of offending our neighbors,

our friends, our families, or our own histories.

I had a really interesting day.

- Tell me about it. - I met with David Matheson.

And it was just so sad.

Some of the things he was talking about were-

I mean, Shane, they were shocking.

Oh, I bet.

While he was talking about all this conversion therapy,

it made me wanna, like, call you, and just-

- Talk about it. I get it. - Yeah! You know?

- It breaks my heart, because while I didn't experience

conversion therapy, I know a lot of people that did,

including Ben.

- Shane has been married to a wonderful man

named Ben for the last eight years.

And when Shane first started dating Ben,

I didn't know Ben.

I knew of him, and I knew that Shane

was kind of falling in love with him.

But also, I heard that Ben had a story

that was really critical of the church.

So I did a little Google search on Ben.

And what came up were kind of some of his experiences

that he had shared about his abuse as a child.

- When I first started dating Ben,

you kind of pulled away slightly.

And it seemed to be because he was more vocal

about talking about his experience.

Why was that hard for you?

Well, you're right.

I mean, that totally did happen.

I pulled away.

And I have never really talked to you about-

I don't think I ever told you that I knew that about Ben.

But-and I don't think I've ever told Ben.

And it's something that has kind of haunted me.

I was scared of it.

And I didn't want it to be true.

I did not want to believe it.

At the time, I was still straddling the fence,

but I had no intention

of facing the truth about the church.

And it was not just being outspoken and critical,

it was about facing the truth about your faith.

- I just wish, you know, as my friend,

we could have gone through this together.

I know. I know.

So much earlier.

I know. I-

you know, so many people reach out to me and, like,

I'm hearing stories from everyone all around the world,

and I'm not sitting down and hearing

the most important stories of the people

I know and love the most.

Would he be open to sharing it with me?

You know what? I don't know.

You know, coming from an abuse victim,

he thinks no one wants to hear it.

He thinks no one will believe him.

You know, that's already ingrained in him.

I mean, I would love the opportunity to be able

to, like, explain to him and make it up to him

and say, listen, I do believe you,

and I believed it, which is why I didn't wanna hear it.

If Ben would be willing, I would give anything

to sit down with him.

- I mean, I would have to ask him

and see how he feels about it.

I appreciate it.

Okay. All right.

Well, it was so good talking to you.

Thanks for talking. I know.

I love you so much, babe.

- I love you too, babe. - Okay.

- Have a good night. - You too. Talk soon.

- Yeah. - Okay.

- Bye. - Bye.

♪ ♪

I think what scared me so much about Ben's story

was that I didn't know a single Mormon

that would ever do such a thing.

It was like one of those situations where you see it,

and you just shut your laptop,

because what he was talking about

was so dark and so terrifying to me,

and that was just a reality that was overwhelming

for me to face, so I pulled away.

Of all the people I've had conversations with

and felt like I would do anything to share their story

and to make them feel seen and heard,

and yet, I hadn't even done that to the people

closest to me in my own life.

It feels way overdue,

and so as much as Ben is willing to share with me, like,

I'm gonna make up for the years

where I turned a blind eye and a blind ear

because of my own fears.

- I haven't talked about this publicly.

No one was doing anything.

Like, why didn't they take that information

and give it to the police?

They cover up sex abusers.

No one listened.

- And you're listening. - I am. I'm listening.

This guy was inseminating virgins with his sperm.

He admitted to it, and it got dismissed.

I heard about stories,

but never in numbers like this.

I'm promising that I'll help carry the burden

and I'll be an ally and an advocate.

I just feel overwhelmed and horrified.

And it didn't even happen to me.