Welcome and Guest Introductions

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 1666

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It is August 16, 2022, and we are in for a really important and exciting and meaningful Mormon Stories epic story. Today, some of the questions we'll be asking and answering is, number one, how does one become a progressive Mormon bishop, you know, in the modern era, especially while working for an international law firm back east in Boston? What's that like? How does that happen?

John Dehlin [00:00:39] What happens when a Mormon bishop's son comes out to him while he's serving as bishop? How does that happen? And then what happens after that? Then following on that, what's it like in the modern era to serve as an openly gay Mormon missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? And how long does that last? And what toll does that take on your health and your mental health?

John Dehlin [00:01:08] Number four, what is it that makes a young Mormon man who's gay become suicidal, maybe even at multiple points in his life? We're going to tackle that one. And then maybe for the part that's going to be maybe most interesting to the highest number of you, because we haven't really covered this ever before on Mormon Stories is what happens when a progressive Mormon bishop becomes a stake presidency member in a, let's just say an influential stake back east in the Boston area and then has clashes with, at least to general authorities over the two Mormon general authorities over the LDS Church's LGBTQ policies, knowing that he's got at least one gay child.

John Dehlin [00:02:02] And where does that leave your family when all of those things happen just in the past two or three years? That is going to be what we're going to be covering today. We've never had someone Gerardo, as far as I know, and Gerardo, welcome, welcome as my sidekick for today. It's so good to have you.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:20] Hey, John.

Evan Smith [00:02:21] Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:02:22] Gerardo's definitely the producer on this episode, and this episode probably wouldn't happen without Gerardo. So it's great to have you, brother.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:28] Yeah, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] I don't think we've ever had as far as I can remember, and I've done like 1650 episodes, so I forget, but I don't know that we've ever had someone who's had open, direct sort of conflict with two general authorities, like we're going to be covering today and is willing to actually name the names of. Of the general authorities, not in a way to shame or belittle, but just as a matter of transparency. Can. Can you think of.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:56] No, I can't yeah, well, actually you had a couple who met with Todd Christofferson, right?

John Dehlin [00:03:04] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:03:05] About suicides and lgbt.

John Dehlin [00:03:07] Megan Jake Abhow, I'm guessing, is that right? Yeah, yeah, that was.

Gerardo Sumano [00:03:11] Yeah. But I mean, they were just, I think lay members. It's different when.

John Dehlin [00:03:16] Yeah. They weren't in the state president.

Evan Smith [00:03:18] Right, Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:03:19] Yeah. So this is going to be great. We're going to get to hear all the details about, like, how modern Mormon general authorities are thinking about LGBTQ doctrine, LGBTQ policy, the future of the church in lgbt, but also how they handle a high level church leader when they start to go rogue. I don't know, is that fair to say? Rogue? Anyway, that's the introduction for today. We hope you're excited. And now we're going to introduce our two guests today. We have with us today Evan Smith and Weston Smith, father and son. Welcome to Mormon Stories, guys.

Evan Smith [00:03:59] Thank you. John.

Weston Smith [00:04:00] Hello. Hello.

John Dehlin [00:04:01] It's good to have you guys.

Evan Smith [00:04:02] It's great to be here.

Weston Smith [00:04:03] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:04] I should start by giving you guys a shout out to your book. So Evan has felt so passionately about these issues that he wrote a book called Gay Latter Day Saint Crossroads, My Journey, your Journey and A Scripture Based Path Forward. So Evan wrote this. You probably started writing this while you were, you know, heavily engaged in Mormon leadership, trying to, Trying to make all these dots connect, is that right?

Evan Smith [00:04:32] Absolutely. I didn't have the intention of writing a book at that time, but it's years in the. In the making trying to figure out how to have that. This dichotomy of what a gay member of the church faces and what is good for in the church and what's actually good for their health and well being. Yeah. Years in the making.

John Dehlin [00:04:49] And my guess is that you want, you know, LGBT parents, parents of lgbt, Mormon parents of LGBT kids to maybe read this. Maybe you want LGBTQ youth to read this, but it also sounds like you want faithful Mormons who are trying to make sense of the LGBT issues and maybe even Mormon leadership who want to kind of think about the LGBT issue comprehensively and maybe even see a more constructive way to deal with it. You're hoping this book is helpful to all those people, is that right?

Evan Smith [00:05:21] Absolutely. I'm hoping that believing members will read it and that they'll understand that there is a path forward based on historical doctrinal changes that have happened in other areas on the Scriptures. And it tells a bit of my personal story and, and Wes was kind enough to let me share his story from my perspective. Two years ago when I. When I released the book. So, yeah, I'm hoping that. That those people are the intended audience.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] All right, so we'll include a link in the show notes to how you can get that book. But as if one author in the family wasn't enough, this other book here is this Body of Water, a memoir by Weston Smith. And I'm not sure I'm aware of a memoir written by an LGBT young man. There probably are a few, but I'm guessing there's not a lot. So this is your book. This is your book, Weston. And we'll also be including a link to that in the show notes.

Weston Smith [00:06:17] Yeah, so I started writing this book a couple of years ago when I came home from my mission, just because I faced a lot of people trying to invalidate my experience and tell me that I, you know, I could have made it if I had suffered or, you know, just sucked it up a little bit more or worked a little bit harder. And I really just felt it was important for me to write a 100% honest depiction of what it's like to be gay in the church and kind of the mental toll that that took on me. And so I've written the book in a way that I really tried to for anyone who wants to feel empathy for people who are struggling with queer issues in the Mormon Church.

Evan Smith [00:07:03] So, yeah, it's hard to read as a parent.

Weston Smith [00:07:08] Yeah, it's very honest and it's very. And because of that, it's very. There are parts of it that get very heavy, but it was something I felt I really needed to write and that I felt was. Would be helpful to a lot of people, so.

John Dehlin [00:07:21] Well, cool. Well, I'm. I'm sure that that book is going to be really valuable to lots of people. So both of your books, I'm really excited that we get to share it with everybody.

Evan Smith [00:07:32] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [00:07:33] So, yeah, my pleasure. So. And also I'm just super grateful that whenever a parent child combination comes on Mormon stories, whether it's the laying or the hackings or there's too many to mention, Donna and Showalter and Michael, there's just so many. So much power and goodness that happens when parent child relationships come on. So thanks to you both and for your other family members for being here in spirit and for supporting this. This telling of your family story.

Evan Smith [00:08:05] Thanks, John. Yeah, thanks for letting us be here.

Weston Smith [00:08:07] Yeah.

Evan's Early Life and Mormon Upbringing

John Dehlin [00:08:08] So we're going to do three parts. We're planning three parts today. We're going to talk about Evan's journey. Sort of be, you know, being raised as an orthodox Mormon all the way to becoming a Mormon bishop, starting out as, let's just say, maybe an orthodox Mormon bishop, but maybe the softening a little bit up until the point where he's. He starts to become a progressive Mormon bishop. That's going to be part one.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] Part two is going to be Weston's story of being raised Mormon back East with your dad as being branch president and ultimately bishop, and then what it's like to be gay in that setting, and then to come out to your dad while he's a bishop, what that's like, and then to try and serve a mission again as an openly gay young man, and what, what toll that takes on you. And then part three is going to be, you know, once Weston comes home, Evan gets promoted from bishop into a Stake Presidency, and then he starts grappling with the LGBTQ issues, his confrontations with high level Mormon church leadership, and where that leaves everyone today.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] So those are the three parts. Which leaves us to begin with part one, which is your Mormon story, Evan Smith. All right, so where should we begin?

Evan Smith [00:09:33] Well, before we begin, I might want to mention a quick comment about you mentioned. I'm naming names of general authorities and discussing things that we talked about in conversations when I was in the Stake Presidency. I know that there may be actually a lot of even progressive Mormons who share the cause or even ex Mormons who think that that might be counterproductive to be talking about private conversations that I had with general authorities. But I. Since writing my book and releasing it a couple years ago and being in this space of Mormonism and LGBTQ issues for two years, I have seen so many stories of suicidality, of just the trauma that the church's doctrine is causing. And I don't think that there's going to be the pressure that's required for anything to get better if we continue to allow these conversations to happen behind closed doors.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:29] So.

Evan Smith [00:10:29] So I want to try to do whatever I can to bring a little bit more transparency to that, how the church hierarchy is approaching these issues. So I know there may be some people who aren't happy that I'm doing what I'm doing today, but I feel like it's very important and that LGBTQ lives are on the line, so we need to need to open the closet doors to those conversations.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] And which are the general authorities that you'll be talking about that you're able or willing to name? Sure. Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:10:58] Well, when I was serving as, as first counselor in the state presidency in, I served from 2017 to 2019. I was released in 2019 because of an interview I had with Elder John A. McCune, who at that time was just recently called as a General Authority. He'd been an area authority for a while before, but I think a few months prior was called as a General Authority.

Evan Smith [00:11:20] So, yeah, we had a debate. It was respectful, but it was definitely a debate. And that prompted me to try to write something again. I didn't intend to write a book, but I had years of research and stuff in my head that I just wanted to get out there to help people.

Evan Smith [00:11:37] Motivated primarily from that encounter with him that led me, once the manuscript was in the hands of some of the brethren, led me to another encounter with another General authority, where that occurred at church headquarters here in Salt Lake with my wife and our stake president, who got flown out by the church for that meeting, and that was with Elder Alan D. Haney. He was in the North America Northeast Area Presidency at the time, and we had a good discussion with him, too, on these issues. So I hope that talking about those conversations will shed some light on. On things today.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] Beautiful. Excellent. All right. And I'll just give a quick shout out to Kyle Ashworth. He's also interviewed you both. I think that on latter Gay stories, I think his interview is going to air after this one. But we love Kyle, and Kyle will.

Gerardo Sumano [00:12:28] Will be.

John Dehlin [00:12:29] You know, you guys with Kyle will have your own angle of discussion, and we just fully support Kyle and what

Evan Smith [00:12:35] he does, so try not to be too repetitive at all.

John Dehlin [00:12:38] So.

Evan Smith [00:12:38] Yeah, one more thing, too, I should say, you know, with elder Haney, Elder McCune, or any other people that I'm naming that I've had conversations with. Obviously, I'm telling it from my perspective. Right. I'm sure if they were sitting next to me, they'd say, well, I don't remember that way or this or that. But I'm being. Trying to be as honest as I can. I took very careful notes after those encounters, but I just want to. Maybe the lawyer in me is speaking a little bit right now saying, look, this is my version of things, so

John Dehlin [00:13:01] any shout out we should do to your awesome wife slash mom.

Evan Smith [00:13:05] She's amazing.

Weston Smith [00:13:06] She's.

Evan Smith [00:13:07] Yeah, she's here with us in spirit. Definitely very supportive. She did a podcast with. With me two years ago, actually, when we released the book on Listen, Learn and Love with Richard Osler.

John Dehlin [00:13:19] Do we want to say her name

Evan Smith [00:13:20] or do we not want to? Cheryl. Yeah, Cheryl Smith. She's the heart and soul of our family. And I Credit her for most of the goodness that I've experienced in my life. She is here with us in spirit. Doesn't want to be here for just various reasons. Personally, she's experienced a lot of trauma herself from Mormonism. And just from a self care perspective, it's better to take a step back and let us do our thing. And she's here with us 100% in spirit.

Weston Smith [00:13:51] So.

John Dehlin [00:13:51] So Cheryl, in a rain check, I want to meet you someday. And also, just as part of a teaser, like I should have added to the introduction, what happens when the wife of a state presidency member kind of starts losing her faith.

Evan Smith [00:14:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] While her husband's serving in a state presidency. Right.

Evan Smith [00:14:08] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:14:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] And it's about to be called as the stake president, potentially.

Evan Smith [00:14:11] Right, Right.

Weston Smith [00:14:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:13] Like that's when things get tricky, when the spouses in high level church leadership are on separate pages.

Evan Smith [00:14:19] Right.

Weston Smith [00:14:20] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:14:20] That's a story I can tell and I always want to. I should also say anything I, I share about Cheryl's view or perspective today, it's obviously caveated by the fact that she would tell it a little differently. But I'm going to try to do my best. She's read what I'm, I've, I've made an outline. She's read it. She knows what I'm going to say. But I'm sure I'll mess things up here along the way.

Weston Smith [00:14:39] So.

John Dehlin [00:14:40] So there's so much to your story and I think your book is going to do a great job for people to go in detail. What we've agreed is that we're going to focus on kind of two things. Both of your faith journeys within Mormonism and then kind of the LGBT policies, doctrine and experiences that interwove. So hopefully we won't sacrifice too much, but we also want to make sure people stay tuned to the whole thing. So let's talk about your, your Mormon experience and particularly the development of your Mormon faith as part one.

Evan Smith [00:15:12] Okay. So I guess I'd start at the beginning. Right when I was like most Mormon stories. I was born and raised in Murray, Utah.

John Dehlin [00:15:21] That's super close to here.

Evan Smith [00:15:22] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] Just five minutes away.

Evan Smith [00:15:24] Exactly. Exactly. I was the third, third son. There's five children in my family, so I'm the middle child. I come from a long line of Mormon ancestry, pioneers on both sides of my family. I have a famous ish, great, great, great grandfather, I guess his name's Thomas Giles, who was converted in England, was blinded in a coal mining accident, came to the States and then went across The Plains blind. Learned how to play the harp for a living. Lost his wife and kids while crossing the plains. Got remarried. When he got to Salt Lake, did

John Dehlin [00:16:00] you say, did your outline, that Brigham Young told him to learn the harp or something like that?

Evan Smith [00:16:05] Yeah, well, Brigham Young had him. Yeah, had him learn the harp, and then when they got to Salt Lake, had him go around to different communities out all throughout the west to play the harp and to kind of have those musical. I don't know if they had those dances or whatever they did in the various communities. He got remarried. I come from, obviously, that second marriage, and he founded what today now is the music department at byu. So I come from a. Definitely.

John Dehlin [00:16:30] Was he a polygamist or not a polygamist?

Evan Smith [00:16:31] No, no, no. No polygamists in. In my family line. And I. With the last name Smith, I. Some people ask me. I got asked this a lot on my mission. Are you related to Joseph Smith? And the answer is no, not related to Joseph or Hyrum. But I do have five. There's five Hiram Smith in the. In the line of. Of my family. My brother and my nephew and my dad. They were all named Hiram Smith. The first one was obviously named while someone was crossing the plains. One of my ancestors crossing plains named their child Hiram, and that just stuck. So.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] And for those who don't know, that's Joseph Smith's brother, who died with Joseph Smith in Carthage jail. Yeah, they were pretty close. Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:17:13] Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:17:14] So we got the. You got the pioneer bonafides, bona fides, or however you pronounce it.

Evan Smith [00:17:20] Yeah, yeah, I guess grew up in a family where, you know, church was everything. We.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] How many. How many siblings?

Evan Smith [00:17:27] There's five of us. There's four boys, one girl in my family.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] And you're wearing the middle child. Middle child, yeah. Third.

Evan Smith [00:17:34] Third boy.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] Okay. And what profession were your parents pursuing when you were growing up?

Evan Smith [00:17:41] Yeah, my dad went to law school, but didn't end up practicing law. He chose to be in real estate development. So he was a real estate developer here in the Salt Lake area.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] Oh, commercial or residential?

Evan Smith [00:17:51] A little bit of both.

John Dehlin [00:17:52] Okay.

Evan Smith [00:17:52] A little. Probably more commercial. Some Jiffy Lubes and stuff like that that he would. He would develop.

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:57] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:17:57] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] And any. Any relationship to. And your mom just kind of did

Evan Smith [00:18:03] the stay at home.

John Dehlin [00:18:03] Mom.

Evan Smith [00:18:04] Yeah, 100%. Was. Was very supportive of my dad through, you know, throughout his whole life, and just the prototypical, amazing, you know, Mormon wife and mother.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] So this is, like, totally random, but through my stepdad, Don McCulloch, my stepbrother Robin married into a Mortensen family that owned like a ton of Jiffy Lubes all throughout Utah. I wonder if there's some connection.

Evan Smith [00:18:29] Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. And I don't know how many Jiffy Lubes he actually did. It was stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] Okay.

Evan Smith [00:18:34] You know, it's kind of like the standalone, but he also had some neighborhoods and some shopping malls and things, so.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] Yeah. How devout were your parents? How committed to the church were they, you know, when you were growing up?

Evan Smith [00:18:44] All in. They were very devout. We had scripture study daily. We had family home meetings. I would say we. We did our family home meetings on Sundays, though, because my dad sometimes had zoning meetings that he had to attend to on Monday nights. So. But we had all. We did everything that you were supposed to do, including having a garden. And we actually rented some land from a neighbor one time to have a bigger garden. And we did all the stuff and a year supply of food. We had that in the basement.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] I was about to ask about that.

Evan Smith [00:19:10] Yeah, Everything. We did it.

John Dehlin [00:19:12] Okay. And you're growing up. I'm. You're like five years younger than me, so kind of mid 70s, early 80s or kind of when you first start remembering.

Evan Smith [00:19:21] Yeah. I was born in 75, so. Yeah. And, you know, we had a few experiences in my family that kind of were foundational for me. And in thinking that there was something real, even as a young kid to the church, my sister, when she was 12 months old, fell out of a second story window. My brother. It just happened to be open. She crawled to it. It was actually at the floor level, so she crawled and found it and she fell out. No bruising? No. She got a blessing at the hospital when they took her there, and she came home the same day without any bruising or anything. What's that?

John Dehlin [00:19:54] How many stories?

Evan Smith [00:19:54] It was a second story window, but it was at the floor level, so I guess she fell about 10ft.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] Oh, my goodness.

Evan Smith [00:19:59] Yeah. Onto a metal grate on the driveway. And, you know, that's one of those things where you kind of wonder how that. How can you not sustain some injury as a young baby like that? But I don't know if, you know, flexible neck or what. I don't know. Some things are hard to explain, but that was something that growing up, I always thought, oh, wow, it's a miracle that, you know, my sister's here. Then. When I was 10 years old, my dad actually was diagnosed with fourth stage skin cancer, melanoma. And he Received a blessing from President Thomas Monson. Actually, I think he was a counselor in the First Presidency at the time. So this would have been in 85.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] How did he get that hookup?

Evan Smith [00:20:40] Yeah, that's a good question. I think President Monson, if I remember correctly, he had Thursday afternoons reserved to give blessings to people in need.

John Dehlin [00:20:48] So this is what it's like to be raised in Sully county as a Mormon. Basically. There's special little connections.

Evan Smith [00:20:54] There are some special. Yeah, I think my dad pulled some connections that he had. I don't know where he had them. I know, for example, my dad, I think, served on the High Council at BYU when he was a BYU student with Mitt Romney. My dad knew a lot of people.

Weston Smith [00:21:08] Grandpa knew everyone. Everyone.

Evan Smith [00:21:11] Yeah, he had a lot of connections.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] I mean, I guess the church has done a lot of construction in its day. So I'm just guessing, if you're doing construction and you're Mormon and you're in Salt Lake, I mean, whether it's the Zwicks or the Burtons or. I mean, there's just a lot of construction going on, temples, chapels.

Evan Smith [00:21:29] So, I mean, my dad never did any development for the church, but I do remember a couple times over the years growing up him telling me that he donated property to the church as tithing. So the property, the value of it was kind of credited to him for tithing. I remember that. So, yeah, I don't know exactly what connections he pulled, but he got in and got the blessing from President Monson. And President Monson healed him that if he had faith, he'd survive, he'd live, defeat the cancer. And he did. He had, like I said, fourth stage and didn't have chemotherapy or radiation or anything, just had a surgery where they removed some lymph nodes that the cancer had spread to.

Evan Smith [00:22:07] And just with that surgery alone, he ended up still living 30 more years. So those experiences growing up kind of put into my mind this. There is some real power in Mormonism, in the church.

John Dehlin [00:22:21] We won't give away the ending, but I'm guessing that your interpretation of that blessing from President Monson maybe changes when you get more information later in your life. Is that a teaser?

Evan Smith [00:22:31] It's a good teaser.

John Dehlin [00:22:32] Okay. We won't give the ending.

Evan Smith [00:22:34] We don't give the ending away. But, yeah, decades later, some light is shared on that.

John Dehlin [00:22:38] But for you and your family, those two medical miracles, as they were perceived, were really foundational to your faith.

Evan Smith [00:22:45] Yeah. For me personally, as a kid, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:22:47] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:22:48] Yeah, yeah. Okay, then, you know, in high School.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] I. Wait, wait, wait. You. You wrote on your outline your two favorite.

Evan Smith [00:22:56] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] Songs you got. I mean, this is more of a. Stories.

Evan Smith [00:22:59] I. I don't know how much time we have today, so, you know, let me.

Weston Smith [00:23:02] I'll.

John Dehlin [00:23:02] I'll. I'll.

Evan Smith [00:23:03] You'll be the judge. All right. Yeah. My favorite hymn was More Holiness, Give

John Dehlin [00:23:06] Me O. I love that one.

Evan Smith [00:23:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:08] Why did you love that one?

Evan Smith [00:23:09] I just really loved how it focused on just becoming kinder, better, more committed. It didn't have a lot of the dogma or the, you know, like, whenever I would sing praise to the man, I always got a little bit uncomfortable, like, why are we, you know, praising Joseph or. But that one was just about inner. Inner improvement, self improvement. I love that a lot.

John Dehlin [00:23:31] Just being a good person.

Evan Smith [00:23:32] Being a good person. Yeah, I really like that. And then give said the Little Stream was my favorite primary song, for sure. I just love the idea of, you know, the stream continually going all the time and helping everybody. Like, even as a little kid, I was like, yeah, rivers are awesome. They make everything green and everything's great. So I just. I love the idea of that.

John Dehlin [00:23:49] So, I mean, that shows some progressive leanings even as a. As a kid then.

Evan Smith [00:23:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:54] Because those are more Jesus love focused than they are, like, doctrine focused, you know?

Evan Smith [00:23:59] I guess. Yeah, I. I mean, I had some definite non. Non Christ like attributes as a kid, including some homophobia growing up, for sure. But yeah, we'll get there. But yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] Okay, so really quickly, do you remember ever attending the. The Tabernacle before the conference center was built? Did you guys ever attend General Conference? Did in the old Tabernacle. Do you remember that? Those kind of Utah Mormon experiences?

Evan Smith [00:24:26] Yeah, I remember sitting on the hard. We went to the Tabernacle a couple times for general Conference, and I remember sitting on the hard pews that were there, those wood pews and. Yeah, great, good experiences. My dad. My dad priesthood session was always a big thing for us as a family. We would sit with my dad, we'd go for ice cream. We do all the. All the traditional stuff.

John Dehlin [00:24:50] Would you go to the local steak center to watch General Conference on the satellite dish or.

Evan Smith [00:24:56] We did a couple. A few times we went to the Salt Lake City in the Tabernacle. I remember as a little kid. But yeah, most of the time it was at the Stake Center.

Weston Smith [00:25:03] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] All right. So anything happening in your, let's say, elementary, middle school years with your family other than. Than these medical emergencies that was really foundational to your faith?

Evan Smith [00:25:19] No. Something not Necessarily things that were foundational my. My faith that way. I mean, it was just. I. I went to the National Scout Jamboree when I was a kid. Church history tour as part of that.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] Is that Philmont or is that somewhere else?

Evan Smith [00:25:30] No, that was at Fort A.P. hill, Virginia. And it happens every four years. I shined shoes every Saturday as a kid for years and years to earn money to pay for my own way. My dad made me do that. And as part of it, the Scout troop that we all went with, it was a regional troop. We did a church history tour on the way. So I remember that was kind of a big thing for my faith growing up, too.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] So did you love the Scouting program?

Evan Smith [00:25:51] No, I hated it.

John Dehlin [00:25:52] You hated it?

Evan Smith [00:25:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] Why?

Evan Smith [00:25:54] I just felt like it was too

Gerardo Sumano [00:25:59] goal.

Evan Smith [00:26:00] It was all about getting to checking off boxes. Right. And I. I'm. I'm very goal oriented and I like checking off boxes, but I didn't want to have to do that in time. That should be like a free time, fun time. And I. I also just. I didn't love camping. I liked it, but I didn't. I don't know, I. I felt like scouting was just a little bit too forced. I wanted to be camping on my own terms. I love, I love the outdoors and I love, you know, rock climbing, mountain biking, camp, and all that stuff, but it was just too forced. So, yeah, I did get my. You got your E. I got my ego. Yeah, I got it. I got it.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] Did your parents have to bribe you?

Evan Smith [00:26:37] They did, for sure.

Weston Smith [00:26:38] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:26:38] We had a rule in my family that if you didn't have your eagle by the time you were 16, you could not drive.

John Dehlin [00:26:43] Yeah. I told Ted K. Off that last week. He's like, no way. The parents don't do that.

Evan Smith [00:26:47] No, they totally do that. We weren't the only ones. They were there. That was like a thing in my wardrobe growing up. There were a lot of people that were like that. So when I was 16, actually, one of the things, another faith, kind of a health thing that promoted my faith was I was in the hospital for a month because I had ulcers from the time I was 10 years old.

Evan Smith [00:27:09] We didn't know why. No doctor could figure out why I was getting ulcers. I was able to quit playing piano, though, because it's too much stress. Right. My parents laid out all the things that I had and said, if it's so much stress, what do you want to quit? And I said, oh, definitely piano. I regret that. But so much scar tissue had Formed in my stomach from ulcers over the years that I was hospitalized because no food was getting through my stomach into my intestines.

Evan Smith [00:27:31] And I got a blessing right before they did a kind of very risky non conventional procedure to open up my stomach. They did a balloon and dilated and just like stretched the scar tissue. And that blessing said I'd be fine. And I was. And I came out. And so again, even that experience led me to, to continue to think that there's some. Something to it.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] I mean, at this point, how could the church not be true? There's been three major medical events. It's pretty much a done deal.

Evan Smith [00:28:03] Yeah, yeah, it, the church worked for me. I mean, really, it did. In high school, I, I was going

John Dehlin [00:28:09] to ask, how happy was your family? Like we were, we were happy people getting along. Like, was it working? Was Mormonism working for your family?

Evan Smith [00:28:17] Mormonism was working for our family. I, you know, in hindsight I look at it and I wish, you know, my mom would have had more of her own things with her, like her, her own stuff to do in life. It wasn't all about just us kids and about dad, but she seemed happy doing that. Right. So. And all of us, I mean, it worked. We were happy. We were good. We were close family and I, we were very close.

John Dehlin [00:28:43] So it's kind of a pretty patriarchal. It was structure. Yeah, it sounds like grandpa was larger. Your dad was larger than life, maybe.

Evan Smith [00:28:51] Yeah, he. Well, he was a kind man too. So he emphasized obedience while also showing love in a way. That was not something I saw a lot with other, other men in the church. As an example, like, I really loved music. I had a lot of CDs and I went to a lot of concerts when I was in high school.

John Dehlin [00:29:09] You mentioned Oingo Boing. I loved Oingo Boingo, like kind of British new wave kind of stuff.

Evan Smith [00:29:14] I like them. I liked Oingo Boingo, probably is the only one there, but I also like some other bands, you know, like Metallica and I had Nine Inch Nails and, and saw them in concert and stuff. My dad did not like that. I like that harder stuff. I think he was fine with Boingo Boingo, but not the hardest. And he, you know, told me, told me to stop listening to that kind of music. But instead of just taking the CDs away, he actually paid me the value of what I had paid for.

Evan Smith [00:29:35] So he was that kind of guy who balanced love. He had. He had a saying that every time you. Yeah, like love is like a pitcher of water. And every time you chastise someone or punish them, you're dumping water out. So you need to make sure that immediately after that, you fill it up with love, too. He's kind of basing that on DNC121, that you go after you chastise someone, you show more love, lest they steam you for your enemy. Right. So he lived by that. And he was very, very good that way, man.

John Dehlin [00:30:03] Just that combination of orthodoxy. But kindness is just a real blessing, I think.

Evan Smith [00:30:09] Yeah, for sure. I was lucky. I was raised in a great family.

Weston Smith [00:30:12] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:30:13] I love the things I learned.

John Dehlin [00:30:14] Yeah. Do you want to talk about the traditional law of chastity, shame spiral kind of stuff? And I don't know if it applies or not necessarily, but it's a normal developmental part of Mormonism. Is there any of that worth mentioning?

Dating, Chastity, and Early Adult Life

Evan Smith [00:30:27] Yeah, I mean, I. I didn't really have the shame spiral per se, because anytime I. I mean, I dated a lot in high school. Like, you know, Utah Mormons, do you go to 10 dances a year? Wes is laughing. Because we do it very differently out East. They don't. You don't do little cute ways to ask people to dances and cute answers, and you don't go to as many dances and stuff like that. And you also don't date as many people. Like, in. In out east, you date one person and that's who you're dating. But here you date. I mean, in Utah growing up, I dated a lot of different girls, kissed a lot of girls in high school.

Evan Smith [00:30:58] I, you know, know, would had a few instances where you would touch. I would touch a part I shouldn't, or they would touch a part on me. And I would go to the bishop immediately. I remember one time, Friday night, something happened and I called the bishop up and said, can I meet with you tomorrow? And I met with him on Saturday and confessed. And so I had the guilt, but as soon as I confessed, it was, like, gone. And I said, okay, good, I met the rules. You know, maybe the lawyer mentality in me as a young kid was already there, which is like, if you're complying with the rules, you're good.

Evan Smith [00:31:26] And so I had that kind of approach to the law of chastity issues that if I just confessed it, it all would be fine. So that happened.

John Dehlin [00:31:35] So you hear about kind of these. Some of these Utah Mormons that like, party but then, like, clean up for blessing or passing the sacrament on Sunday. It sounds like that wasn't you.

Evan Smith [00:31:46] That was not me. No. I actually never. I never drank, smoked, had coffee or tea or anything like that ever, you know, until a couple of years ago when I left the church. When I started. Yes, spoiler alert, spoiler alert. But no, never had any of that. Never did any of that. Definitely was a true believing teenager. My dad found me sleeping one night when he came home. I had the scriptures at my. On my pillow and he took a picture of me. Actually, it's in my scrapbook. Yeah, my mom put that picture in my scrapbook that she made. She made scrapbooks for all of us. I have 10 scrapbooks in my whole life.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] And the picture was just of you,

Evan Smith [00:32:22] me sleeping with the scriptures open on my pillow.

John Dehlin [00:32:26] Like every parent's dream.

Evan Smith [00:32:27] Yeah, I mean, I wasn't a perfect kid. We did some things in high school with my buddies. We used to play pranks or do some vandalizing or whatever, things like that. But I never broke any of the church's commandments. And if I did on a lot of chastity stuff, it was always kind of minor. And I went immediately to the bishop after that.

John Dehlin [00:32:44] Okay, so you do mention in your outline visiting a strip club.

Evan Smith [00:32:48] I too, which is a super hardcore.

John Dehlin [00:32:51] Not a Mormon thing to do.

Evan Smith [00:32:52] Not a Mormon thing to do.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] Where was there a strip club in Salt Lake? Yeah, you were like 15 or 16.

Evan Smith [00:32:58] So I. No, I was eight. So I was one of the.

John Dehlin [00:32:59] Oh, that was later.

Evan Smith [00:33:00] So I. I had a early. Older. I was older for my grade. So there was a group of us who were turning 18 in the Strip club. I think it was out by the airport. It just opened. It was non alcoholic, so if you were over 18, you could go. And it was like, honestly, like a spur of the moment. People were just like, oh, you won't go, dude. No, you'll go. No, no. And you're just like giving each other hard times. It was like a dare. And I went in and it was like for 10 minutes and then I came out and again the next day I was like, bishop, Bishop, I gotta talk to you.

John Dehlin [00:33:26] Sometimes that stuff strengthens your testimony. It can when you sin a little bit. Just enough.

Evan Smith [00:33:32] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Talk about how President Nelson, current Mormon prophet, comes into the picture.

Evan Smith [00:33:38] Yeah. He had three daughters that were living in my ward while I was growing up. So I was friendly with a lot of his grandchildren in the youth program in our ward. And he would come and visit our ward periodically for, you know, listen to their talks or whatever they were doing in church. So I met him several times growing

John Dehlin [00:33:52] up in your ward.

Weston Smith [00:33:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] So for those who don't know, in Utah, like, a ward is often like two streets in a neighborhood because such a high percentage of the people can be Mormon. Now, I know this is Salt Lake county or Murray, but at the same time, this is 30, 40 years ago. So that means that President Nelson's three daughters must have lived, like, within one or two or three streets of each other.

Evan Smith [00:34:21] Absolutely. Yeah. Around the corner from each other.

Weston Smith [00:34:22] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:34:23] Three. I can't imagine three sisters all living that close to each other.

Evan Smith [00:34:27] Yeah, they did.

John Dehlin [00:34:28] All in the same ward.

Evan Smith [00:34:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:30] Does that mean Nelson, like, came to your, like, spoke in your. Your soccer meeting sometimes or visited?

Evan Smith [00:34:35] I think he made some comments. I remember making some comments one time, but I remember a lot of times he would just come and sit in the. Sit in the pews with everybody else.

John Dehlin [00:34:42] He would have been an apostle, but

Evan Smith [00:34:43] not was an apostle.

John Dehlin [00:34:44] Correct, Correct.

Evan Smith [00:34:46] I remember one time we went up to a house in the. We had a young men's activity, like a camp out, and we were staying at a. At a cabin somewhere, maybe Midway or somewhere. I don't remember exactly, but he was there. We were at his. His cabin or something, because I remember he was home and like, surprised. The young men's leader was surprised that he was there when we knocked. And he said, oh, no, we can leave, we can leave. And he. President Nelson was like, no, no, you come. You're good. He was. It was very nice. I mean, I. Really good memories every time I met him.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:35:10] Good guy.

John Dehlin [00:35:11] You mentioned being maybe a little bit homophobic in high school. That's going to play in later as you, well, have a gay son, but also as you try and grapple with these issues. Do you want to talk about what it was about, your Mormon experience or your human experience?

Evan Smith [00:35:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:26] And that would contribute to homophobia.

Evan Smith [00:35:29] You know, it was. It was something in where I grew up here in Utah, where we didn't actually view homophobia as a thing.

Gerardo Sumano [00:35:35] Thing.

Evan Smith [00:35:35] We didn't even think. And it was completely normal, natural for boys, for guys to just be teasing each other. Oh, you're such an f. You know, we would say that word and it was just like nothing. You just laugh about it. And we played smear the queer recess, where you just have one guy have a ball and everybody's. The whole point of that is just to go get him and beat him, you know, pound him and get him to let the ball go. I didn't even think that those things were negative.

Weston Smith [00:36:02] Right.

Evan Smith [00:36:02] And in my mind, I was like, oh, that's Just fine. That's no big deal. But they were, they're horrible. And in. I just had that, that upbringing where it's completely fine to view that negative view, homosexuality or same sex attraction or gay sexual orientation, whatever you want to call it. And when I was growing up, we didn't really even. I didn't even think about it much. It was just like, those are weirdos, those guys. And that's what, that's how I was raised.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] Would you have met kids in high school or in your ward or whatever that you thought might be gay or were gay?

Evan Smith [00:36:30] Not that I remember, no. First time I ever met someone who I knew was gay was on my mission in San Francisco.

John Dehlin [00:36:37] Would you have been taught teachings out of like Miracle Forgiveness by Spencer Kimball about what being gay meant in the Mormon context? And do you want to share that?

Evan Smith [00:36:46] Yeah. I remember reading Miracle Forgiveness one of those times I went to the bishop. I got assigned to read that book and I did. I was very dutiful in my repentance process and read the book and I remember reading that part, those, those parts in there about homosexuality and I.

John Dehlin [00:37:03] Which said things like, things like it's

Evan Smith [00:37:05] a, it's a perversion that I think it actually says masturbation can lead to homosexuality. I think President Kimball talks about that. That just, just the teachings that in my mind when I was reading them, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. That's fine. And I just would move on. It's perverted, it's dirty, it's perversion, it's dirty, it's. It's unnatural. And.

Gerardo Sumano [00:37:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] Sitting next to murder, all that kind of stuff.

Evan Smith [00:37:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:27] Okay, so you don't remember actually being mean to, like no gay kid or anything?

Evan Smith [00:37:31] No. Never bullied any, any gay kid or anything that. But in my mind it was completely fine to say, oh, that's so gay. And you're so, you know, you're such a. Yeah, totally fine.

John Dehlin [00:37:40] You talk about a way to kind of gain a testimony. You, you kind of had one. But talk about your bookworm experience.

Evan Smith [00:37:47] Yeah. So I, you know, actually after the strip club experience, I felt so bad that I actually kind of changed my group of friends in high school and started hanging around with a group of friends. I hung around with both groups a lot. Kids who were following church standards and other kids who weren't. But I ended up, the year before I went on my mission, hanging around with people who would really be good influences on me. And I read the Book of Mormon that year before I went on my mission because I wanted to know for myself for sure. And I remember finishing the Book of Mormon when I was almost 19 and praying about it, and I just got the feeling, I thought in my head, you already know.

Weston Smith [00:38:26] It's true.

Evan Smith [00:38:27] You already know. And so I, you know, I relied on that for decades after that.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Yeah, you already know. It's true.

Evan Smith [00:38:34] You already know.

Gerardo Sumano [00:38:35] I do have a question there. So I think I've heard Todd Christopherson say the same thing in General Conference about that's how he received his testimony of the Book of Mormon. Would you have heard something like that of someone else having that experience? And then it. You. Do you remember that? And maybe influencing, you know, that's a great part of your experience.

Evan Smith [00:39:02] Great question. I honestly don't remember anyone specifically saying, you know, that sort of thing. But I do think I remember hearing other leaders, or even if it's just youth leaders say sometimes it's not a lightning bolt, right? It's just, it's just a confirmation of the good feelings you've had over the course of your life. That can be, that can be enough. Like, I remember that somebody telling me that sort of thing. And so I wasn't surprised when that's what I. That the experience I had, I, I

John Dehlin [00:39:30] guarantee that was in the air, whether some story from General Conference or some film strip or video that we watched in seminary, you know what I mean? Like, that meme of you've known all along, once that gets seeded, it gets destroyed, or you could have heard it in random testimonies shared in sacrament meeting or something a youth leader taught you. Like, once that meme gets shared, that was absolutely a thing when I was growing up. Would that have been similar for you, Gerardo? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] That's a powerful thing. Like, you don't need that. You. Because you found yourself wanting to know. It's almost like a thought stopping technique, right? Because you find yourself saying, oh, I don't know, so I want to know. And then you study it and then something comes in your brain that says, oh, you've known all along. It's almost like these are not the droids you're looking for. It's like you've known all along.

Evan Smith [00:40:22] You've known all along. Yeah, that's true.

John Dehlin [00:40:26] Yeah, that's a part. Those memes are powerful. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. So you knew all along. So good. So you got a burning testimony now and you're ready to serve your mission.

Evan Smith [00:40:35] Ready to go. Ready to serve my mission. I served my mission before I did any college. So back Then it was, you had to be 19 before you served a mission because at an older age I was, it turned 19 in November. I just worked all the way through, try to earn, earn more money to pay for my mission.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] You like Class of 92?

Evan Smith [00:40:50] Class of 94. 94. 94, yep. And I got my mission call in November, week after I turned 19, November 94 and it was to Oakland, California, English speaking. I remember I was bummed that I

John Dehlin [00:41:05] was going because the valiant young men, Mormon do what they go abroad, you

Evan Smith [00:41:10] go forward and you learn another language, you have an adventure. And I was going like an hour and a half flight away and speaking English. I was really kind of disappointed because I, you know, I was a smart kid in high school. I had, you know, really, really good grades, took Spanish many years. I was excited to maybe go Spanish speaking. But it didn't happen. At that time. After I was in the mission field for, I was in Oakland for a month, my mission president called me and reassigned me, turned me Spanish speaking for the rest of my mission. I was turned. I was after two months of trying to learn Spanish on my own. I'd wake up early in the morning at 5:30, study and try to get a lot of it. After two months of that, I was a trainer in the mission in the Spanish program.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] So how did you encode getting sort of transferred over as a Spanish speaking elder testimony wise?

Evan Smith [00:42:02] Oh, I, it was a huge boost to me, you know, patriarchal blessing, right? Yeah, there's a part, there's a line in my patriarchal blessing that says, couple lines that say you'll be a blessing to your mission president as he sends you out to bless the missionaries and your tongue will be loosed and you'll be able to bear your testimony. Well, so in my mind I thought, oh, this is, you know, fulfillment of patriarchal blessing prophecy that I am now assigned to speak Spanish not by the church but by my mission president. And so, and I had a real, you know, strong testimony at the time of the gift of tongues that I, you know, you could, you could learn the foreign language.

Evan Smith [00:42:37] And I, because of those things, I don't know what cause and effect, I don't know what's cause and what's effect. Right. If you have the idea that if you are blessed with the gift of tongues, you'll be able to speak well. But that also means you have to put in the effort because God's not going to do it for you alone. Will you just learn span? Will you learn it more quickly than you would Otherwise. And so it, I don't know that it was, it was an interesting event on my mission, for sure.

Temple Experience and Mission Service

John Dehlin [00:43:01] You shared something about your temple experience that you and I share. And I'm going to give a little history so that then you can. Okay, you can fill in the blank. So, so obviously there's this Mormon temple ceremony. We've talked about it almost every episode.

John Dehlin [00:43:13] You take out what you know, do your washings and anointings, then you, you get, you take out what's called your endowment. And you know, in modern, of course, decades ago, there was no film. It was all, you know, actors acting out, you know, different characters. Adam and Eve and Satan and Peter, James and John. Just imagine all these actors decades ago acting out this script of like the Garden of Eden, plus God interacting with his apostles and teaching Adam and Eve. But then once the, the advent of motion pictures, the Mormon Church decided to turn the temple ceremony into a motion picture. And so you still did the, the covenants and the signs and the tokens in as part of the temple ceremony, but you watched a movie instead of seeing live actors.

John Dehlin [00:44:05] But you know, fast forward to the, you know, late 80s and 90s, you could go to a regular vanilla Mormon temple and you would just get the movie. Yeah, but if you were a hardcore Mormon, you wanted the authentic experience. And that's something that I did when I, you know, I grew up in Texas, but when I came to Salt Lake, I did the same thing you

Evan Smith [00:44:27] did, which was I wanted to go to the Salt Lake Temple. So our assigned temple was a Jordan River Temple. And that would have been a video

John Dehlin [00:44:33] temple, which is where I took out my endowments.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:35] Okay.

Evan Smith [00:44:36] At the Salt Lake Temple in the Jordan River. Jordan River Temple.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] But that wasn't good enough for me.

Evan Smith [00:44:40] Oh, for you. So you wanted to. Okay, so I wanted my first experience to be a live ceremony, not a video replication, which means that you have the actors that have memorized the whole temple. The hour and a half long endowment ceremony, they are play acting it all the way through rather than watching a video of what the ceremony is.

John Dehlin [00:44:57] And they're usually super old.

Evan Smith [00:44:59] Super old. They're not. I mean, it's dry. They're not. But, but I thought in my mind I said, if this temple ceremony has been around for thousands of years, and if it's, you know, I want to see it like Adam saw it or I want to see it like Brigham Young. Like, yeah, like, yeah, I would experience it the same way they did. Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:15] So instead of Satan being Michael Balin being all theatrical in the movie you've got some 80 year old dude.

Evan Smith [00:45:20] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] He's being Satan.

Evan Smith [00:45:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:22] And. And I don't. I. I actually don't know how it is now, but back then there were only a couple temples in the entire

Evan Smith [00:45:29] world that did Salt Lake and Manti, so.

John Dehlin [00:45:32] Well, I think also Cardston, Canada, maybe at one point.

Evan Smith [00:45:36] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:36] But there were only like two or three temples in the entire world. Did you. Harada, did you ever see a live Mormon temple endowment until lake. So you're hardcore like us.

Gerardo Sumano [00:45:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:46] Okay. Her. Arthur, you joined the club. Heroda can join the club of hardcore Mormons. Okay, so you, you wanted that as well?

Evan Smith [00:45:53] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:45:54] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:45:54] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:45:54] And I had pretty good experience going through the temple. I.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] So your first temple experience was with live actors?

Evan Smith [00:45:59] It was, it was live actors and, you know, it was the time when they were doing the initiatories where you just had the sheet. It's. You're not fully close, so there's some of the touching the skin and stuff under the sheet. And that. That was. I thought it was a little weird, but I also was like, hey, this is. This is what they did thousands of years ago.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:15] Right.

Evan Smith [00:46:15] So I'm okay with this. Right. So, yeah, I. I wasn't too weirded out by the temple really either. I was. It was. I just wondered why they did some of the things, the handshakes and all that stuff.

Weston Smith [00:46:26] What's that about?

Evan Smith [00:46:27] But my dad.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] You missed the penalties.

Evan Smith [00:46:29] I. I did miss the penalties, yeah. By a few years. I didn't have to cut my, you know, say that I would slit my throat or anything like that. But my dad was great, you know, in the social room, talking me through all this stuff and talking to me about how all these signs and these things, you know, you look on Buddhist statues, they're doing the similar sort of stuff. And so I was. I. I actually didn't have too weird of an experience.

John Dehlin [00:46:47] So I actually don't know whether there are. I know the Salt Lake temple is being renovated, so there's no live endowments there right now. Do we know if live endowments are still happening in the church or if they killed that.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:56] They're going to kill it. My understanding is that when they renovate, once it's done in Salt Lake. In Salt Lake, it's not going to be done.

John Dehlin [00:47:03] What is it? Are there remnants anywhere else where they're still doing it live today?

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:07] They took it out of Idaho Falls a few years ago because I think Idaho Falls used to be live too.

John Dehlin [00:47:13] We'll have to ask our viewers or listeners right in if in Kardston or where else Manti they're still doing the live stuff or if they've killed that church wide. I'm embarrassed. I don't know the answer.

Evan Smith [00:47:24] I don't know either.

John Dehlin [00:47:25] I should know. Of all people, I should know, right? Yeah, you should. Okay. Anyway, so carry on. You did the temple thing pre mission, right?

Evan Smith [00:47:33] Pre mission, yeah. And then I had a good mission experience. It was pretty intense. I had a very strict mission president. He used to have. I served as a zone leader for 10 months on my mission, and he used to have us as zone leaders, go and do spot checks at 7am to make sure the missionaries in our zone were up and dressed in their full proselytizing gear, you know, shirt and tie. At 7am to study that.

John Dehlin [00:47:57] He didn't talk about first medium. Cause I bolted that part of your interview. Because this guy sounds more intense than even my mission president, who's pretty intense.

Evan Smith [00:48:06] I mean, I loved him, but he was very intense. And he scared a lot of missionaries. He didn't say hello to me when he first saw me. I walked off the plane. He said, elder Smith, your hair looks like. Your hair's got too much gel in it and your tie's too bright. And he.

John Dehlin [00:48:20] Did he have a southern accent?

Evan Smith [00:48:21] He was a big burly guy from Tennessee. Great guy, but very, very intimidating.

John Dehlin [00:48:28] You said your tie's too bright.

Evan Smith [00:48:31] Your hair's got too much gel on it. It looks like ramen noodles. And your tie's too bright. Let's go.

John Dehlin [00:48:38] That's awesome.

Evan Smith [00:48:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:40] Was he funny or serious?

Evan Smith [00:48:42] Serious. He was serious, but he had a good sense of humor sometimes, too. We actually had a mission reunion after my mission where one of the elders did a skit impersonating him doing an interview and just did all the mannerisms and kind of just like made fun of the guy. And he laughed like crazy at that. So, I mean, he was very

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:00] strict

Evan Smith [00:49:01] and sent a lot of missionaries home because he believed in obedience, like, as the utmost thing.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] He kind of put the fear of God in you right at the beginning. What did he tell you?

Evan Smith [00:49:10] He said, you know, what are you here to do on your mission? I said, well, I'm here to teach people the gospel. He said, no, you're here to baptize. And how do you baptize? Well, I teach him that. He's like, you be obedient so you can have the spirit. What happens if you're not obedient? I said, I don't have the spirit. He goes, yeah, and you go home. So, yeah, he was pretty intense. He was very intense.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] That is pretty intense. But then he kind of set up the leadership to. To be enforcers, right?

Evan Smith [00:49:34] For sure. Yeah, we were definitely enforcers that way. The whole mission had that mentality of, you are. You are here to ensure that people are obedient so that they're, you know, having the spirit. And he used to have us go out on the street with crowd counters in our pockets, and just on the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, we would talk to tens of thousands of people a week.

John Dehlin [00:49:54] What's a crowd counter?

Evan Smith [00:49:55] Like, you know, you. You have them. Like if you're an usher at a theater and you're counting the number of people that are coming in. We used to go buy these counters and keep them in our pockets.

John Dehlin [00:50:04] Never heard of that before.

Evan Smith [00:50:05] Yeah, yeah. He. He had the goal of having every by. By number of. We called it golden questions. You would ask someone, do you want to learn more about the Church of Jesus Christ? Do you want to learn about the Book of Mormon? Or the best golden question that he thought was, do you want to be baptized? Click, click, click, click, click. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people. He had the goal of having all of the population of the Bay Area, but numerically have been contacted by his missionaries during his three years as mission president. And he got there for sure. Like, we. We were very much encouraged to do that.

Weston Smith [00:50:40] So.

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:41] So were you encouraged to invite people to get baptized on the first lesson?

Evan Smith [00:50:47] Yes. He actually, one of the things he did from. He took the car full of missionaries from the airport when they first arrived, he would take them to breakfast or lunch or whatever, and he would ask us to ask the servers if they would be interested. You know, he said, what do you. What do you say, elders, here's someone who's not a member of the church. What are you. What are you going to say to them? And the server's like, stand there going, what's going on? And we would all say, well, do you want to learn more about the church? Well, that's okay. That's not good. That's not. He said, ask her if she wants to be baptized. So he would actually tell you, model for us, that that's what you would do. You. You meet someone, you ask them to be baptized.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:22] Oh, what do you think about this? The quote by Ballard just a few years ago saying. I have the quote right here. It says, church leaders don't know where these practices began, but it was never our Intention to invite people to be baptized before they had learned something about the gospel, felt the Holy Ghost, and has been properly prepared to accept a lifelong commitment to follow Jesus Christ.

Evan Smith [00:51:44] Yeah, I don't know. There was definitely something in the air that was encouraging that because actually I remember midway through my mission, Lauren C. Dunn, whose General authority came to the mission and did some training and he taught us, modeled for us in his own leader zone meeting, how to invite someone to be baptized. On the first discussion. He said, you know, after you pray, you sit there on your knees and don't move. Let the spirit sink in. Don't say anything, don't move. Let them be the first ones to talk. The invest the person investigating the church and then when they, when they talk and they acknowledge they're feeling good, ask them if they'll be baptized. That was the training we got on our mission.

John Dehlin [00:52:21] Wow, that's cool.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:23] Did it work?

Evan Smith [00:52:25] We had a lot of baptisms. We had decent retention for, you know, the period of time when they're recording retention. I don't know how long term the retention rates are. I think I baptized probably 50 something people on my mission and I can think of a handful of them that are still going.

John Dehlin [00:52:43] That's actually a large number of baptisms for a stateside mission.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:46] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:52:46] Well, that was Spanish speaking, right? I think that's one of the reasons why the mission president wanted more Spanish speaking missionaries than the church was giving him was because the Spanish program, we baptized more people.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:56] Was it easier to baptize the Latinos?

Weston Smith [00:52:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] What are spot checks?

Evan Smith [00:53:02] Where you show up at 7am to make sure that they're in their shirt and tie.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] Who shows up to make sure?

Evan Smith [00:53:06] Zone leaders. So I would show up as a zone leader and make sure that the missionaries, the four missionaries in a given apartment are up and in their shirt and tie studying the gospel when they should be. So you can't sleep in and there's no slacking. And they wouldn't know you're coming. You just knock on the door.

John Dehlin [00:53:23] So military, FBI.

Evan Smith [00:53:25] I did that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:53:26] You did that too? Yeah. Talk about what he said about silent acts. And I almost want to call it the unwritten order of things, but kind of the, the shadow rules in addition to the formal rules. As if there aren't enough rules on a mission.

Evan Smith [00:53:43] Yeah, he would. The silent acts of the brethren is the way he. I think he got that from a talk from somewhere. But Meaninging who? The Twelve Apostles. You follow? Not just what they're saying, not just what? The First Presidency and 12 apostles are saying, but you follow what they do, you model what they do as well.

Evan Smith [00:53:58] He told us that's why we're dressed the way we are as missionaries. That's why don't drink caffeinated beverages because that's not at byu. It is now, but back then it wasn't. And just the, you know, he used to teach us, actually, also in zone conferences, there was an interracial marriage thing that he used to teach us to avoid marrying someone of your. That's not of your race. Because he would show us a quote from Spencer Kimball that said not to, not to do that.

Evan Smith [00:54:27] The marriage was hard enough, and it's harder if you marry someone who's not of your same race. And that was something he would emphasize in zone conferences. Go around and ask missionaries, you know, because our missionary, our mission had 16 language programs in it. It was very diverse, the most diverse of any mission in the church. So there's a lot of people from different areas of the world and different races in our mission, a lot of missionaries. And he would ask them, so you're, you're Tongan. Who you supposed to marry? What, what girl kind of girl you supposed to go? A Tongan. And that's just how we were taught on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:54:55] It's just so super racist. Read the quote that he would share with you all. Because that quote is just so heinous

Gerardo Sumano [00:55:01] and just so everybody knows. This is not just. I know President Nelson has repeated this quote recently.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] I think it's still in the church curriculum somewhere.

Evan Smith [00:55:11] I don't necessarily fault my mission president for this. No, he's just, he's teaching his missionaries about how they should think about marriage after their mission, using the words of the prophet to do it right. So he said now, quote, right, quote, Spencer B. Kimball. Spencer Kimball from 1965. Yeah. Now, the Brethren feel that it is not the wisest thing to cross racial lines in dating and marrying. There is no condemnation. We have had some of our fine young people who have crossed the lines. We hope they will be very happy. But experience of the Brethren through a hundred years has proved to us that marriage is a very difficult thing under any circumstances. And the difficulty increases in interrace marriages.

John Dehlin [00:55:48] Yeah, I totally grew up with that quote. What's weird is you're all missionaries and you're not even allowed to date people of the opposite sex for two years. And he's like indoctrinating you with kind of race, kind of a sort of racist. No interracial marriage doctrine during a time you're not even allowed to date people.

Evan Smith [00:56:08] Yeah, you're not allowed to date. I think part of his. He actually would say this, that that part of his responsibility was to not just help us be successful missionaries, but to help us be successful after our missions. And so he was trying to help us understand how to date and who to. Who to potentially date to get married and things like that, so.

John Dehlin [00:56:26] But it sounds like you're into it. Talk about sleeping in your suit.

Evan Smith [00:56:30] Oh, yeah. I would get home as only. Yeah. His only leader. You had to call, right? We had. Every night. We had to call everybody in our. In our zone or in our district, if you're a district leader. And you had to get nightly numbers from them. So you had how many GQs they had, how many golden questions, like how many clickers did they do, how many Book Mormons they gave away, how many discussions they taught. And that was every single night. And sometimes that process. Because if I got home, you know, right at 9:30, and if you were ever home after 9:30, you were in big trouble.

Evan Smith [00:56:54] But I would get home instead of 9:15, 9:30 on the dot. And I started making my calls. Sometimes those calls will go till 10:30. And you're supposed to be in bed at 10:30. If you're not in bed, we were taught that you're disobedient. So I didn't have time to take my suit off. Sometimes I just would jump into bed and turn off the light. So that was probably four times I did that on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:57:13] That's so intense.

Evan Smith [00:57:14] Yeah, I was pretty.

Gerardo Sumano [00:57:15] It was.

Evan Smith [00:57:15] It was intense.

John Dehlin [00:57:16] But I don't remember district and zone leaders calling every day like we did. It would be once a week. In my mission, we used to call every day.

Gerardo Sumano [00:57:24] Yeah. His mission experience was so close to mine.

Evan Smith [00:57:27] Like.

Gerardo Sumano [00:57:27] Yeah, very similar experiences. But, yeah, we called every day. The reason for us was. One of the reasons they told us was because just to make sure that our missionaries came home. It was Mexico City and kind of dangerous.

Weston Smith [00:57:42] But, yeah, I had a very different mission experience, but it was the same for us, too. We had to call every day.

John Dehlin [00:57:49] It's just. It's so. I don't. It's so intense. You know, there are other words I want to sometimes say, but, like, it's so. It's very controlling.

Evan Smith [00:57:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:57] And it's very intense that every missionary is called every night by their district or zone leader.

Evan Smith [00:58:03] Yeah. And, you know, it had the effect on me of really making me associate that strict.

John Dehlin [00:58:09] Just one sec.

Evan Smith [00:58:12] Yeah, I just associated that strict obedience with a sense of self worth and righteousness. Like if I wasn't obedient, we would make fun of the disobedient missionaries.

Weston Smith [00:58:21] Right?

Evan Smith [00:58:21] We would. They were, they were losers, they were slackers, they were, you know, not doing what they should. And that stuck with me. After my mission, I came home and my stake president, in the interview when he released me as state president or as missionary, he asked me what I learned on my mission. And I think most missionaries say they learn about the, of love Christ and helping other people and things. And I said, well, I've learned that sustaining church leaders is the most important thing we can do in the gospel. And that was what I learned on my mission. So, I mean, I did have a testimony of the Savior and atonement and those things too. But I definitely felt like if I was going to be a good Mormon, that's what I needed to do was sustain my leadership. That stuck with me for decades.

John Dehlin [00:59:07] So there were a lot of people of color in the Oakland area on your mission? Yeah, this would have been after the priesthood ban and the temple ban on black Mormons was lifted, but you still would have had to talk about the history of the church's racist past. What did you learn and how did you teach and answer questions about the Mormon Church's racism?

Evan Smith [00:59:31] So I'm on the streets of Oakland and you talk to, you know, mixed people, a lot of Hispanic people, but also a lot of, a lot of black people on the streets. And there's a, the, the church's temple is up on the hill in Oakland and you can see it from, you know, downtown Oakland. You can see that his church lit up on the hill. And so you would ask them. We actually had pass along cards that we were giving out as we were trying to pictures of the temple. And I had a lot of black people on the street tell me I can't go, I can't go into your church.

Evan Smith [00:59:55] And I said, well, no one can unless they're members. No, no, you don't understand. I can't be a part of your church. I know you guys don't let us. And I said, no, no, that's not true, we do. And they would challenge me. And then you get into like, oh, well, since 1978, it's been okay, well why, why wasn't it before 78, why wasn't it okay? And I had to try to change the topic on the street. But I remember in discussions where we had some people who would ask the question in discussions. I remember a couple times teaching The Bruce R. McConkie Fence Sitter Doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:00:24] Right.

Evan Smith [01:00:25] Spell it out for those in the pre existence. There were people who chose to follow the Savior's plan and people who chose to follow Satan's plan, people chose to follow the Savior's plan, came to the earth. And there were some people who chose to follow Savior's plan but weren't as diligent or valiant in doing so. And so they would be born in this life in different circumstances, including, you know, they'd be born black and so they couldn't have the priesthood. And I would teach that. And I feel horrible about that. Like, it makes me actually really emotional saying that. I really regret that I ever thought that.

Evan Smith [01:01:00] But I did. I read what Elder McConkie and others. I mean there's a lot of people who taught that, a lot of general authorities, and I remember hearing it in church growing up, that's the explanation for why the priesthood ban existed. And I, I obviously recognize now it was pure utter racism.

Evan Smith [01:01:20] It's not of God. But the church today hasn't even admitted that it's not of God. They admit that it could have been. They need to come out and apologize and say, folklore, yeah, it's folklore. All those, yeah, all those reasons for it were just. They're not doctrine. They weren't, you know, but there's enough evidence to show that it was, it was something that the church officially taught.

John Dehlin [01:01:42] Oh, there's countless prophetic utterances, general conference talks, and several signed first presidency statements.

Evan Smith [01:01:50] Yeah, 1949, 1969, first presidency statements where they describe the teaching as a doctrine and they talk about the pre existence and the difference in different levels of valiancy and things like that. So I mean, I try not to beat myself up too much because of the circumstances that I was, how I was raised and what I was taught. But in hindsight I just. It tears me up. I hate it.

John Dehlin [01:02:10] Well, like you say somewhere in your outline, when you know better, do better, do better.

Evan Smith [01:02:14] Maya Angelou. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] Yep.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:18] How about teaching Latinos that they wear Lamanites? Is that something?

John Dehlin [01:02:22] Yeah. Did you even think about the Laymanite curse?

Weston Smith [01:02:24] Yeah, a little bit.

Evan Smith [01:02:25] We talked about it a little bit, but not much. I, I didn't emphasize that.

John Dehlin [01:02:28] You guys are an afterthought hero.

Evan Smith [01:02:29] Yeah, I was teaching, you know, we were teaching Hispanic people.

John Dehlin [01:02:33] I don't mean that. Listeners and viewers. I don't mean that. Okay, okay, keep going. Sorry.

Evan Smith [01:02:40] Now, even though we were teaching Hispanic, you know, that was. Those are people I was primarily teaching. We didn't get too much into the Lamanite idea of.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:46] But not like this book was written by your ancestors. That kind of stuff you Occasionally.

Evan Smith [01:02:52] I did, but we. I liked to focus more on. Because I think I did that a couple times, and I didn't get much traction. So I like to just focus more on. Your Catholicism is awesome, but let's just build on that. You can keep all these things and then look at this other stuff. We have, like, eternal families and all these other things. And I didn't really do the Lamanite angle very much.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] How about the great and abominable church angle?

Evan Smith [01:03:16] No, I did not. I did not say that there are apostles who had taught that the Catholic Church was the great nominal church mentioned in the Book of Mormon. No, I did not mention that.

John Dehlin [01:03:28] Somehow. Yeah, okay. So as we all know, San Francisco is super gay. So what did you do when you ran into LGBTQ individuals as a missionary, or did you.

Evan Smith [01:03:40] I did. Yeah. Several times on the streets. And, you know, I would have interesting discussions with them, but they would most of the time just walk away and not talk to me. But sometimes they would talk and say how homophobic our church was and how harmful it was, and I would just kind of go away. I wouldn't talk to them. I wouldn't, you know, deal with that. I did have an experience with.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] Wait, Weston, Why are you nodding your head?

Weston Smith [01:04:01] I just. Even now, there's some. Where I live in Toronto, I see some Mormon missionaries, and some of them have actually come up to me, and I do the same thing. I'm just like, nope. Bye.

John Dehlin [01:04:12] You get it?

Weston Smith [01:04:13] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:04:14] Yep. I did have someone serving in. In our. In a branch, a Spanish branch in San Francisco. Who was. He was a returned missionary. He's from Guatemala, and he was really into helping the missionaries, and he asked me to go on splits one time. And I. Because of my homophobia, I think I interpreted a lot of what he was doing as advances towards me. Some of it was a little unusual, like he would. Paying more attention to me than my companion and things like that. But I was so homophobic that I was really freaked out by it. And I called my mission president. I told my mission president about that, and he called the Sikh president and got that guy in trouble

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:00] again.

Evan Smith [01:05:00] There's so much I regret, John.

John Dehlin [01:05:01] Oh, don't worry about it.

Evan Smith [01:05:02] I just. If I. If he's listening, I'm not gonna say his name, but if he hears this, I would love to apologize to him. I really would.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Was he openly gay?

Weston Smith [01:05:13] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:05:13] I wouldn't really Talk about it much. But you'd go to his apartment and you'd see some things that would indicate that he might like, you know, just some things on his walls and other things that led me to, led us all to kind of expect that he was. And we had other members in the branch who would tell us, oh, yeah, yeah, he's gay.

John Dehlin [01:05:31] And he. You told your stake president?

Evan Smith [01:05:33] Told my mission president. Told your mission president. You told his stake president? Yeah, called him in and just talked to him. And I don't think anything happened. Like he didn't get released from any calling or any punishment or anything like that. But it was just the fact that the Sikh president even talked to him about it. It's just bad. It was stupid.

John Dehlin [01:05:51] And bless his heart, he's trying to stay Mormon.

Evan Smith [01:05:53] Yeah, he's trying to stay Mormon and he's trying to help the missionaries do splits and go on, you know, preach the gospel and this. And I think the mannerisms and the way he was like, I think he just liked me, honestly, as a missionary. He wanted to help me, help teach with me. Right. It wasn't like it was. I don't think he was. He was actually making moves. Making moves. No. But in my 1920 year old mindset, homophobic perspective, I thought he was.

John Dehlin [01:06:17] Yeah. Did you ever teach anyone and like consider baptizing someone who is gay and then get to that point where you had to have that baptismal interview and.

Evan Smith [01:06:29] No, I remember asking that question in all the baptismal interviews I did though, as a district leader, zone leader, you asked the question, have you ever had any homosexual experiences? And if it was, I think in the last three years they had to then talk to the mission president. So. Yeah, but I, I never had an investigator who was, who was gay.

John Dehlin [01:06:48] Go figure.

Evan Smith [01:06:50] Fortunately, I did not.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:06:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:56] But this is pre Prop 8, is that right? This is pre Prop 8.

Evan Smith [01:06:59] Oh yeah. Prop 8 was 2008. So I was on my mission 94 to 96.

John Dehlin [01:07:02] Yeah. So there's a good 10. But also there's Prop 22, which would have come to California, I think afterwards too. I don't, I don't know, around 2001, 2000, 2000.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:13] The family proclamation would have come out in 19 during your mission, right?

Evan Smith [01:07:16] Yeah, yeah, I did.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:17] How, how did that.

Evan Smith [01:07:20] I thought it was awesome. I remember, I remember President Hinckley, you know, just talking about it and unveiling that. And I thought, this is great. I honestly thought that same sex marriage was a horrible thing for our society. And I thought that you Know, the pardy would crumble, you know, if same sex marriage was allowed. So I was very much in that frame of mind.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:44] That's interesting, because to me, I never saw the family proclamation as something that was written. And maybe, I mean, I grew up in the church in Mexico, so completely alienated from what was going on in the United States and the efforts to pass same sex marriage. But would you have known that efforts for legalizing sex and same sex marriage was happening in the US and that and the family proclamation being a response to that, or was it kind of like two separate things in your mind?

Evan Smith [01:08:15] More two separate things. Well, I vaguely remember hearing about the Hawaii case that was going on at the time, which actually, I think prompted the proclamation on the family. I think was more of a legal positioning. Literally. Was it literally written using terminology that other Protestant evangelical churches had used to try to get good. Try to get standing so they could be a friend of the court in court cases that were challenging gay marriage? That's where the proclamation of the family came from. I obviously didn't know that at the time, but when I was serving as a missionary, I remember there was. I heard rumblings about how there was cases about gay marriage and so. But I just love the proclamation as a. As a standalone thing. I thought it was cool.

John Dehlin [01:08:55] You mentioned getting into kind of. Well, one thing you mentioned that's similar to Gerardo is. Is getting into the Jova's Witnesses and Joe's Witnesses a lot.

Evan Smith [01:09:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:05] Because you probably would have bumped into them on the street, people who've been taught by them.

Evan Smith [01:09:09] Yeah, yeah. And I had on the front of my Bible, from my Spanish Bible, three pages of copious notes that were specifically only for bashing with Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [01:09:18] We have a lot of ex Jehovah's Witnesses who watch Mormon stories, so they'll be interested to hear that.

Evan Smith [01:09:23] Yeah. I mean, we would just show scriptures and I would go back and forth. I actually had like a few scriptures that were omitted from their translations. And they would say, oh, you couldn't take anything out. Like, I just. I had it down.

Weston Smith [01:09:33] Yeah. So really quickly, I'll share. The one experience I have with Jehovah's Witnesses is that they knocked on our door while we were home on P Day. And I came to the door. It was just like the name tagging, like my P. Day clothes. And I remember they asked me, they're like, hey, is your mom home? Because I looked like I was 16. They're like, hey, we want to talk to your parents. My companions did not let me live that down. And I just was like, no. Like, bye. Just, I know what you're doing here. So anyways, how old are you now? 23.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] Okay. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. But you mentioned getting in trouble for kind of getting into speculative doctrine a little bit, which is a. Which is a sign of a more hardcore missionary. Like, I was right.

Evan Smith [01:10:15] I was studying hardcore. I was very into the scriptures, and I read all the institute manuals with the scriptures.

John Dehlin [01:10:23] Me too.

Evan Smith [01:10:24] And so on. Over breakfast one day on a spot check, we were at another elder's apartments. And over breakfast, I just started speculating. I said, guys, I don't know if this is true or what I believe, but what do you think about Adam being the Holy Ghost? And I just kind of threw that out there.

Evan Smith [01:10:38] And my mission president called me and like a week later told me that one of the other missionaries in that apartment had told him that I was teaching false doctrine to my. To my investigators, that I was telling my investigators that Adam was the Holy Ghost. And that was absolutely not what I was doing. I would never do that. It was just this kind of random conversation I had over breakfast with a missionary. But that other missionary kind of ratted me out to the mission president. And my mission president chastised me and told me, I need to stop doing that. And I. I said, I'm not doing it.

Evan Smith [01:11:06] And he said, well, you need to stop it. And I said, I'm not doing it. He said, well, you need to stop it. I said, okay, fine, whatever.

Weston Smith [01:11:10] Stop.

Evan Smith [01:11:12] So, yeah, that was one incident like that. I did ask my mission president, though, in a training session of zone leaders and district leaders. I asked him because he had a Q and A at the end of every training session. I said, what do you say to people who ask us about the atom God theory? Because I did get one guy ask me about it, and I remember mission president telling me that I didn't good. Need to get down. Getting into that and that, which is

John Dehlin [01:11:35] the teaching that Adam, the first human, is also God.

Evan Smith [01:11:40] God the Father. Yeah, that he's God the Father and that Elohim is his father. Right. So that, like, I think Elohim is the grandfather of Heavenly Father. Heavenly Father's father. So our grandfather or something like that. And I, you know, asked. My mission president just told me, he goes. I pressed him on it a couple times, and he said, you know what? Brigham Young could have just been wrong. And that kind of. That struck me. I was like, whoa, he's admitting that maybe. Maybe he could have just got it wrong. That's interesting.

Gerardo Sumano [01:12:08] At the time I think Joseph feeling Smith would have been teaching his books that this was just one instance of Brigham Young talking about it. Now we know.

Evan Smith [01:12:21] Now we know. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:12:22] Spread widely and the teaching was even in the temple ceremonies.

Evan Smith [01:12:26] Right. I didn't learn until about a year and a half ago when I was listening to a radio free Mormon podcast. Podcast.

John Dehlin [01:12:30] Shout out to rfm.

Evan Smith [01:12:31] Shout out to rfm. He's amazing that in the show notes. Yeah. There's episode, great episode where he just, he outlines how it was accepted doctrine. I mean it was taught at the veil of the temple. Like Brigham was very, he felt very strongly about it. So I, I, I didn't know that at the time. Wasn't really a theory, it was a, this is the truth.

Weston Smith [01:12:48] So.

Gerardo Sumano [01:12:48] Yeah. Nice.

John Dehlin [01:12:51] Okay. So anything else about your mission experience before we get you married and having kids?

Evan Smith [01:12:59] No, I think that's like that's enough for my mission.

Weston Smith [01:13:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:02] So you and your did, were you ap, were you AP in your mission?

Evan Smith [01:13:05] No, I was only interestingly did you

John Dehlin [01:13:07] feel disappointed you didn't make it?

Evan Smith [01:13:08] I, it's interesting you asked that, John. That's not my outline. You're inspired.

John Dehlin [01:13:12] Well, I'm seeing, maybe I'm projecting a little bit.

Weston Smith [01:13:14] Yeah, yeah. He's in tune with the spirit.

Evan Smith [01:13:16] He's in tune with the spirit. No, I actually that's really on my mission. The Spanish speaking missionaries were the APs for like probably the first four. They, they had been for two years and I had been zone leader for 10 months. And tradition had it that the person who was zone leader for the longest, the Spanish speaking missionary who was zone leader for the longest would become the next ap. That would always happen. And my mission president did not ask me to be ap. He, he told me he called some, he called a Chinese speaking elder to be AP with a Spanish speaking companion, which was a little bit weird and told me I shouldn't be disappointed.

Evan Smith [01:13:54] And he made me a trainer of another brand new missionary and said, you know, don't be disappointed. So I don't know why that happened. I don't know what. But yeah, I was bummed. I felt like I had done something wrong.

Weston Smith [01:14:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:07] I remember talking with Marlon Jensen who was church historian in a general authority and he told me personally when he didn't call get called as an apostle, he wondered what he had done to offend God. So you're not alone.

Weston Smith [01:14:20] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:14:21] So I don't know.

Marriage, Family, and Law School

John Dehlin [01:14:23] Okay. So you come home a total disappointment not having been AP Just kidding. You come home triumphantly as a worthy two year honorable release missionary. Yeah, I'm sure. Did your mission. How did you end it with your mission president? Did he give you instruction? Yeah, Very good terms.

Evan Smith [01:14:43] Very good terms, actually. And he needs coming to go home, find. Find a wife and. Yeah, typical advice that you get.

John Dehlin [01:14:50] Find a wife and have kids and.

Weston Smith [01:14:52] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:14:53] Continue serving in the church. He was great. He's a great guy. I don't have any bad feelings towards him. I think he was. You know, it's about systems, not people. Right. I remember you guys say that a lot, so. But I met Cheryl after almost. In 1997. I met her in September of 97. So I'd been home for my mission for almost a year. We both met at BYU really quickly.

John Dehlin [01:15:17] You mentioned that she has a Polish background.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:19] She does, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] Was it Jewish? Polish? You may not be comfortable even saying no.

Evan Smith [01:15:23] No. Her maiden name is Percinski and Catholic. Her ancestors on that side are Catholics. And her parents, her grandparents actually were on the last boat that left Poland before the Nazis invaded and they immigrated to Canada.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] Okay. Yeah. There's a lot of Polish influence in like the Midwest, Chicago, Illinois and I guess Canada.

Evan Smith [01:15:45] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:15:45] Okay.

Evan Smith [01:15:45] Yeah, for sure.

Weston Smith [01:15:46] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:15:47] So she's Canadian.

Evan Smith [01:15:48] She's Canadian. Yep.

Weston Smith [01:15:49] She's Canadian.

Evan Smith [01:15:49] Born and raised.

Weston Smith [01:15:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:15:53] Yep. Yeah. And she was at BYU same year. She's two years behind me in school. But. So because of the mission. We were the same year. We were both sophomores when we met at BYU, beginning of our sophomore year. 97. Yep. And met on a blind date. One of the guys I knew from my mission, who had kind of become my best friend after my mission set us up. And I was smitten at first glance. Honestly, our first date, it just. We just connected so well. I remember coming home after that date, I called my mom, I said, mom, I met my wife. And four days later, Cheryl and I were talking and I felt gutsy enough and felt the spirit tell me that I could mention marriage to her. And she felt the spirit tell her that it would be okay. And so we decided to get married four days after meeting each other.

John Dehlin [01:16:44] Four days after meeting, you decided to get married?

Evan Smith [01:16:48] Yeah, we decided to get married four days after meeting each other.

John Dehlin [01:16:52] Whoa. I don't know if that's a record, but that's. That's pretty close. That's pretty. So you were married how long after meeting?

Evan Smith [01:16:59] We got married in December. So three months after meeting.

John Dehlin [01:17:02] What the.

Weston Smith [01:17:03] That's.

John Dehlin [01:17:03] That's pretty hardcore.

Evan Smith [01:17:04] It is pretty hardcore. And we attributed it at the time to the spirit. But in hindsight, we both talked about this a lot. We just were really into each other. Like, chemistry was there. Like, I never felt it before. And we just really.

Evan Smith [01:17:20] We just knew, you know, when, you know, you know, it doesn't have to be a spiritual, supernatural thing. It can be just the way you connect with someone else. So very fortunate that that's always been there. And I knew that Cheryl believed in the church. She was a convert as a teenager up in Toronto, but kind of a reluctant convert, I would say. Her sister got baptized.

Evan Smith [01:17:45] Her mom was coming back into the church after being inactive for a long time. Her dad's not a member of the church. Church never has been. And Cheryl kind of went along to get along, kind of got baptized, because everybody was doing it sort of thing.

Evan Smith [01:17:55] Believed in a way, but didn't really have a clear understanding. And I like to say that some people say they married their spouse because of their testimony. And I married my. I married Cheryl, you know, regardless of whatever testimony, I knew she had one. And that was enough for me. I had the checklist of things I wanted to see in my wife. You know, testimony was there, and I was like, okay, I can check that off. I didn't, but it wasn't something that I was overly worried about. I think that's actually been a blessing to us because now that the church is not so much a part of things, there's a real foundation there that's not based on the church, which is really good.

John Dehlin [01:18:27] That's.

Evan Smith [01:18:28] We're lucky. We're lucky. There's a lot of people that don't have that, and we're lucky that we do.

John Dehlin [01:18:34] So quick marriage. Does that mean quick babies?

Evan Smith [01:18:37] It does. I pressured Cheryl.

John Dehlin [01:18:40] Why are you smiling, Weston?

Weston Smith [01:18:41] Oh, because I was the baby.

Evan Smith [01:18:43] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:43] He's the.

John Dehlin [01:18:43] You're the quick baby.

Evan Smith [01:18:44] He's the quick baby.

Weston Smith [01:18:45] Oldest child.

Evan Smith [01:18:47] Yeah. Wes was born in 1999, so about 18 months after. I think Cheryl wanted to wait for a little longer.

John Dehlin [01:18:55] A whole year or something.

Evan Smith [01:18:56] Yeah. No, like.

Weston Smith [01:18:56] Yeah, well, because they were still in school. And, like, they have all these stories about my aunt watching me while they were both in class, or me sitting in the back of a lecture hall, or my aunt taking me to the BYU Creamery in between classes, even though my mom told her not to, like, all the stuff to get ice cream.

Evan Smith [01:19:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wes was a smart baby. He went to a lot of classes with us.

Weston Smith [01:19:16] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:19:16] There was a quote from President Kimball about how you shouldn't Wait to have kids. So I, I talk about that with Cheryl and again, I was very much like, you sustain. You follow the silent acts, you sustain the brother and you do what you're supposed to do. I still had that mindset.

John Dehlin [01:19:28] Yeah. Holland would have left BYU by the time you got there. Maybe Rex Lee was still president or maybe he had left and someone else.

Evan Smith [01:19:37] No, it wasn't Lee. And I think Holland was God Bateman.

John Dehlin [01:19:40] Maybe, but, but Holland would have had a reputation of telling these stories of him and Pat getting married and not putting off having kids and how sweet, how hard it was to have kids in your undergrad, but how blessed. And it was the best time ever.

Evan Smith [01:19:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:54] To be trying to get school done and to have the wife working and to be having kids all at once, you know, that was kind of glorified as like hardcore true Mormonism.

Evan Smith [01:20:05] Oh, yeah, that's what I thought. And I actually remember thinking that struggling, like that was good for a young couple.

Weston Smith [01:20:11] Right.

Evan Smith [01:20:11] That you came together and you learn how to get bounce off the ropes together and then it brings you closer together. So yeah, that was where we were.

John Dehlin [01:20:20] Yeah. Okay, so. So anything else you want to say about undergrad or grad school that was really important to you?

Evan Smith [01:20:27] I worked nights at the mtc. I was MTC teacher and then I worked mornings, early mornings at call center. So I was for who? For new skin? Yeah, I was working 40 hours a week between those two. 40. More than 40 hours a week. And I was going to school full time. I had a full scholarship, academic scholarship. And because I was married so young, I had a Pell Grant too. So I used to, I used to get a check every quarter, every semester for going to school. I got paid to go to school basically.

John Dehlin [01:20:54] And then what scholarship did you have?

Evan Smith [01:20:55] Just an academic, full scholarship.

John Dehlin [01:20:57] Which one? I don't like four year tuition or.

Evan Smith [01:20:59] No, no, it was a running. I had to keep my grades up to keep it, keep it going.

John Dehlin [01:21:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was intense. I, I had like, maybe you felt the same thing I did, but I had to keep a 3.9 GPA or higher to not lose my scholarship. But my parents couldn't afford to put me through school, so that was just so much pressure to never be able

Evan Smith [01:21:17] to get a B. Yeah, I was similar. Yeah, I was similar. I, I, I got, you know, I never got straight A ch. Only I had a joke that I would always get one A minus and that's what I did. Every, every semester. I had like 1Aminus, but that was it.

John Dehlin [01:21:28] Are you comfortable sharing your final GPA?

Evan Smith [01:21:31] It was a 395 or something like that. I remember exactly.

John Dehlin [01:21:34] Yeah, yeah. I was 3, 9 6. I don't. None of it matters now, but back then it's almost all that mattered. It is me.

Evan Smith [01:21:44] Oh yeah. Well, you're. You're intense pressure to. To be the provider and to make a career and to do those things. And so I. I felt like it was part of my spiritual duties to. To work hard and to. I wanted to. I wanted to graduate without debt because I really believed in what the prophets had said about avoiding debt. And so, yeah, that was a big part of it.

John Dehlin [01:22:04] I had a little debt I had to buy. I bought a personal computer. I needed it for some classes I took, so I bought one of the first computer, personal computers, laptops that ever existed and it got me into debt that I had to pay off a little bit later. So a little, Little demerits for me.

Evan Smith [01:22:21] I think it's okay to get. I think even the brethren say it's okay to go into debt for school. But at the same. I was that kind of Mormon, right. I was like, well, no, no, no, no. If I can avoid it, I'm not just going to take out a loan because I need. Because I want to. If I can avoid it, I'm going to avoid it.

John Dehlin [01:22:32] Yeah. And both of us applied to law school. I didn't go, but I. I got in a couple law schools. So you, Where'd you go?

Evan Smith [01:22:41] I went to University of Toronto Law School.

John Dehlin [01:22:43] Because of Cheryl.

Evan Smith [01:22:44] Because of Cheryl. Well, mostly also because it's just a great school. Like, people don't realize it's in the top 10 internationally as far as law schools go. I was surprised I got in and decided that I would go there. And you know, worst case, it maybe not even worst case, like it would be a good thing if I was living close to a family. We'd have to.

John Dehlin [01:23:03] Did you turn down any stateside schools?

Evan Smith [01:23:05] Yeah, I turned down several stateside schools.

Weston Smith [01:23:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:07] What was the best one you turned down?

Evan Smith [01:23:09] I was. I was. I was waitlisted on Cornell, so.

John Dehlin [01:23:12] Nice.

Weston Smith [01:23:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:14] Yeah. This is the only time I'll ever say this, but I was waitlisted at Harvard.

Evan Smith [01:23:18] Oh, wow. John. John's one up and get in one upping me, but I didn't get in.

John Dehlin [01:23:22] Yeah, I got in at BYU and University of Texas. That's where I got.

Evan Smith [01:23:25] Okay. All right.

John Dehlin [01:23:26] And then I never went.

Evan Smith [01:23:29] Nice.

John Dehlin [01:23:29] So you got accepted where besides Toronto?

Evan Smith [01:23:31] I got accepted to Iowa with full scholarship, North Carolina, Full Scholarship and some other places. But I. Yeah, I got byu.

John Dehlin [01:23:38] That's good.

Evan Smith [01:23:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Byu.

Weston Smith [01:23:41] I got a subject.

Evan Smith [01:23:41] BYU with a half scholarship.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] Yeah, yeah. Fun.

Weston Smith [01:23:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:45] So, Gerardo, you and I are both having similarities with Evan a little bit.

Gerardo Sumano [01:23:49] Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Weston Smith [01:23:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:51] All right. Sorry, everyone. That I'm just kind of vibing. Okay, so anything about law school or.

Weston Smith [01:24:01] No.

Evan Smith [01:24:01] When I was in law school, I was called a scout master, which was ironic because I did not love scouting. Served as that for the whole three years I was up there. Cheryl got called as early morning seminary teacher, which she did while she was pregnant with Owen, our second. She was teaching girls that were beehives when she was a laurel because she was so young.

Weston Smith [01:24:21] Right.

Evan Smith [01:24:22] As early morning seminary teacher, which was interesting. Dynamic.

John Dehlin [01:24:24] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:25] So.

Evan Smith [01:24:25] And I had my conservative views politely challenged by a lot of my fellow law school students over those three years.

John Dehlin [01:24:31] So what would your views have been? They're worth mentioning.

Evan Smith [01:24:34] Well, I mean, I. Gay marriage was a topic that was going on at the time. And I remember, you know, because Canada

John Dehlin [01:24:40] is more progressive than Canada's.

Evan Smith [01:24:41] Way more progressive. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, just. Just even the conservative views of. I mean, I was a. I was a very conservative, Fox News watching type guy back then, so.

Weston Smith [01:24:55] And for context, I think Canada legalized gay marriage while you were there. So it was like early. It was like 2003, 2004. So.

Gerardo Sumano [01:25:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:03] Was that Rush Limbaugh or Fox News?

Evan Smith [01:25:05] I mean, back then I. I did listen to a lot of Russian Limbaugh back then. I don't remember if Hannity or what. I don't remember when they all were. But. Yeah, I mean,

John Dehlin [01:25:15] sometimes when Mormons go back east to go to grad school, they hide from their fellow gentiles their actual beliefs about things like same sex marriage. So did you own.

Evan Smith [01:25:27] I owned it.

John Dehlin [01:25:28] You owned it?

Weston Smith [01:25:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:29] What were those conversations?

Evan Smith [01:25:30] I was confident enough that this was right. Right. And so I was able to. I've tried to have intellectual arguments for it, and I tried to. I tried to defend it.

John Dehlin [01:25:36] Did you ever argue with a gay law student that same sex marriage was bad as a Utah Mormon?

Evan Smith [01:25:42] They didn't tell me that they not. Not with anyone that I knew was gay.

John Dehlin [01:25:45] Okay.

Evan Smith [01:25:46] No, no. But. And honestly, I was so busy that I didn't gauge. I didn't engage in a ton of those conversations. I kind of went to school, took notes, and then came home to my kids because I graduated law school with three kids, so I was pretty busy. I didn't really have a ton of time to engage in those sort of things. But there were several conversations that I had.

John Dehlin [01:26:06] How do you look back on those years of having three kids in law school school, and your wife's pregnant all the time and, and serving in the church fondly? Is it a blur?

Evan Smith [01:26:17] Both. It's. It was a lot of pressure on us and a lot of time, but I also think may. It made me more committed to being a good dad and to being the type of.

Gerardo Sumano [01:26:35] Of.

Evan Smith [01:26:36] Of husband that I. I thought that. That I should have been. I didn't realize, you know, now I. Now in hindsight look at. And I'm like, yeah, a good dad, a good husband's around more than I was or. Or, you know, doing. But honestly, John, law school was easy compared to actually practicing law as far as time commitment goes.

John Dehlin [01:26:50] Corporate. Corporate. Love corporate.

Evan Smith [01:26:51] Yeah. My big law. Corporate level, like. And I love what I do. I love my job, love my career. But yeah, in. In hindsight, law school was the breeze. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:27:00] Yeah. Did you read 1L before you started law school?

Evan Smith [01:27:03] Did I read. Oh, no, I didn't. No.

John Dehlin [01:27:04] Book one?

Evan Smith [01:27:05] No, no.

John Dehlin [01:27:07] And I didn't ask you this, but when you and Cynthia.

Evan Smith [01:27:11] Right, Cheryl.

John Dehlin [01:27:12] Sure. When you and Cheryl. Sorry, Cheryl. When you and Cheryl got married, like, was it we're gonna live the gospel full, full throttle, Was it. Was there a pretty good understanding that pedal to the metal?

Evan Smith [01:27:24] Yeah, yeah, there was. I think both of us were committed to that. I think she was. And again, I don't want to, like, again, I'm speaking for her, but she could. She could correct this, and maybe she'll correct me when I get home, but I. I think she was committed to. To do it mostly because I was. She always kind of struggled a little bit with a lot of the teachings of the church and just kind of put struggle.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] Makes it sound like a weakness, right?

Evan Smith [01:27:47] It does, and it's not.

John Dehlin [01:27:48] But in reality.

Evan Smith [01:27:49] In reality, it was.

John Dehlin [01:27:50] She had questions.

Evan Smith [01:27:51] She had legit, legit concerns.

John Dehlin [01:27:54] About what?

Evan Smith [01:27:56] Just about the way the church. One of her biggest concerns was the way the church taught. And she hated what her patriarchal blessing said about it. That, you know, Mormons are blessed or more special. You're more special if you were born Mormon or if you joined the church. Right. The elitism that she would see sometimes would really bother her. She's like, why am I any better than someone who's in Africa who doesn't have the church? That really just bothered her a lot. She didn't like the way women were treated in the church. I Remember her discussing those things with me quite a bit in our early days of our marriage.

John Dehlin [01:28:29] Now I'm vibing with early Cheryl because I, I had those questions too.

Evan Smith [01:28:33] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:35] Not so much about women, I'm sad to say, but definitely about just Mormon superiority. Never made sense to me.

Evan Smith [01:28:42] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:45] Okay, so. But otherwise, pedal the metal. Was she more leaning on you to be the hardcore righteous priesthood holder and was she kind of riding your coattails or did that ever swip, you know, flip at all?

Evan Smith [01:28:57] Yeah, I don't know if I would say she's riding my coat tilts. I mean she was doing her own thing. She was served as young. After, after law school we went, I mean she was early morning seminary teacher in law school. Right. And then we went to Boston and got a job and she got called as young women's president in our first ward. And so she was serving and doing things, you know, on her own.

Evan Smith [01:29:18] I don't think she was necessarily riding my coattails by any means, but she was, I think had more reservations about the doctrine of the church than I did for sure. And she would have been okay with me being the type of Mormon man who would say no to a calling if it was going to be a hardship for my family if I was working too many hours, which I was. I mean you're a first year, first year lawyer at these big law firms. You're working a ton, like 60 plus hours a week on average.

John Dehlin [01:29:52] Billable hours.

Evan Smith [01:29:53] Billable hours, yeah. And then you got to do on top of that, you know, the even average, even a minimal calling is five hours a week and then you get called as high counselor or whatever else you're going to do or then, heaven forbid, bishop, and it gets 10, 20 plus hours a week on top of those type of hours. She would have loved if I would have been kind of more the, oh, let's just go to church and make it work and not feel bad about saying no to callings. But that wasn't me. I was, I was, you know, keen on being all I could be and do and sustaining my leaders making.

Evan Smith [01:30:23] I thought that my job was to make my leaders jobs easier. And so I would always say yes and I would always put in the extra time and the extra effort some. And I feel bad about that because, I mean, I think it made Cheryl feel like she wasn't as important. So

John Dehlin [01:30:40] that's what we do. You were on the train, you're on the Mormon train. I was the same thing, just in tech instead of law. Just you, you basically just give 68 hours a week to your orbain. Before that, you just give everything to your company. The wife takes care of the kids. And you figure out your marriage in 10 or 20 years when everything falls apart.

Evan Smith [01:31:00] You know, we were pretty lucky. We had good communication all the way through. I don't feel like we ever had a bad marriage. I feel like we had bad times and I did have to. I made efforts to try to prioritize, Cheryl, but it's hard. There's only so much time in the day. Right. So we didn't have a bad marriage by any means. We always had a good connection and good marriage and good communication. But it was hard. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:20] It's not so much bad marriage, but you don't often strengthen the marriage like you could as a Mormon couple with a lot of young kids.

Evan Smith [01:31:29] Yeah. You had a good marriage and you now, in hindsight, I realize how much better it could have been.

John Dehlin [01:31:34] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:31:34] And I regret missing that betterment because of what I was going through with the church.

John Dehlin [01:31:39] Yeah. So the decision, some could argue the decision to go into corporate law,

Weston Smith [01:31:47] you

John Dehlin [01:31:48] know, you could say, oh, but that's going to take you away from your family a lot. That's going to, you know, work in 60 to 80 hours a week. How are you going to be all the time to be a good dad, to be a good husband, to serve in the church. But Mormon culture doesn't steer men away from those top corporate jobs. Can you talk about the decision to get into corporate law and the decision to move to Boston?

Moving to Massachusetts and Church Leadership

Evan Smith [01:32:13] Sure. So moving to Boston, it was just a job opportunity. There was on campus recruiting, and I would make more money if I was moving to Boston than if I stayed in Canada. And I also at that point kind of knew I wanted to focus on startups as my job. And so Boston had a really vibrant startup scene.

John Dehlin [01:32:33] And tech or biotech?

Evan Smith [01:32:36] Yeah, both. Both tech and biotech.

Weston Smith [01:32:37] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:38] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:32:39] So I wanted to be big law because it made the most money. Honestly, it would be the best thing for my family from a financial perspective. I also. Cheryl and I talked about this on our first date, actually. Cause her dad was a real estate developer too. And we both remember years when our prospective dads had hard times because the real estate market was so bad. I remember my dad telling me sometimes, oh, we can't afford to buy school clothes for you guys this year because things are rough. Right. And I told her, I said, I don't ever want to have to do that to my kids.

Evan Smith [01:33:06] I want to have something steady. I want to make a lot of money, but I also want it to be steady and relatively risk free. And so for me, looking at all that, I said, well, corporate law fits the bill.

Evan Smith [01:33:17] And I wasn't afraid of putting in the hard work. And I found out how to make it, how to balance it. Like I used to, you know, in the mornings, be there with the kids, help give them breakfast, get them on the bus. But that means that I woke up an hour before they woke up to do some work that had come in over the night and couple two or three nights a week, week nights I was home and I was able to give them baths and help them dinner. Then I would also stay up when everybody else had gone to bed for an hour or two after.

Evan Smith [01:33:41] It was like my typical, you know, first 10 years of practicing law. And I just viewed that as what, you know, I was expected to do because I had to meet all these obligations, church obligations, family obligations, everything else. It's just, it is what it is.

John Dehlin [01:33:54] So there's a way to read Christ and Christianity in the New Testament. You know, it's harder for camel to enter the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven or to read the Book of Mormon and its denunciations of materialism. It's easy to read the New Testament, the Book of Mormon and say, being rich is bad, being wealthy is bad. Not going to do that. But there's something about maybe the Mormon experience or the American experience where you can be highly religiously orthodox and just not even pay attention to those types of scriptures. And it's just like, no, no, we're going for the money and you're orthodox Christian.

Evan Smith [01:34:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:37] Have you even thought about the paradox or the irony there now? Or is that just in Mormonism you just.

Evan Smith [01:34:44] I think about it now, but back then I never really did. I thought, you're paying my tithing. I'm paying my tithing. So I'm giving up a lot to try to be a good Christian. That's what I thought. And I remember the Book of Mormon scripture, that it's good to be learned as long as you hearken to the counsels of God. I kind of thought the same thing. It's good to be rich as long as you hearken to the counsels of God and you use your riches to benefit the kingdom and you're trying to help other people and that sort of thing like that. You know, the church wouldn't have much if there weren't rich members paying tithing. Right. So I thought I was doing good. That's what I think a lot of people think.

John Dehlin [01:35:20] And as we've been talking about abuse this week and last week, it's sort of, you know, we've thought about how did the church get to where it is in 2022. And you look at the composition of the current first presidency, quorum of the 12, and the general authorities, 80% are lawyers, businessmen, you know, bankers, accountants.

John Dehlin [01:35:41] And, and then, you know, if, if they aren't that it's like church education. But like, you look at role models like Henry Eyring, Harvard Business School grad, he's in the first presidency. Down H. Oaks, Chicago University of Chicago law grad, University of, you know, university, Utah State Supreme Court Justice. Right, Yep. You, you look at our history, all the general authorities, like what, nine out of 12 are either businessmen or attorneys. Like, there's, there's a gazillion Mormon dentists and orthodontists and medical doctors disproportionately represented in grad schools across the country. There really is something about being a white collar, upper class Mormon and becoming as wealthy as you can in Boston.

John Dehlin [01:36:27] That's where Mitt Romney went and started Bain Company. And then Bain Capital, like Boston has this Clayton Christensen comes out of that Boston Mormon crowd.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:37] Right.

John Dehlin [01:36:37] There are others. There was the guy who's the president of Harvard or president of Harvard Business School, Kim Clark. Like Boston has this rich tradition of super faithful but super rich and powerful Mormons. Yeah, right.

Weston Smith [01:36:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:55] Did you know you were joining that scene when you moved to Boston?

Evan Smith [01:37:00] I didn't think about that so much.

Weston Smith [01:37:01] No?

Evan Smith [01:37:02] No. You know, when I got called into leadership positions later, which we'll get to, and I tried to explain to some of my colleagues what I was doing with my time. Sometimes on a Sunday when I couldn't take a call because I was doing something, I would use Mitt Romney sometimes as an example. You know, he had a very successful career doing this and that, but he was also a bishop and he was in the sacred. Like, I would explain to them that I can make this work. Right.

John Dehlin [01:37:26] So, yeah, he was kind of a legend because he had been governor of Massachusetts for sure. Yeah. Was he governor while you were there

Evan Smith [01:37:32] or he was, or before? Yeah, before I was there.

John Dehlin [01:37:35] Okay.

Weston Smith [01:37:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:36] All right, so what else do you want to say about, like. So you moved to Massachusetts. Was it Massachusetts or Plymouth?

Evan Smith [01:37:43] Yeah, we moved to the Plymouth area of Massachusetts and loved, loved our experience there. Cheryl and I got called as Stake Institute teachers while we were there. We both were Serving on, on the ward council at the same time sometimes. So our kids would come to church with us early in the morning and they'd be watching.

John Dehlin [01:37:59] Why are you shaking your head?

Weston Smith [01:38:01] I just remember being like locked in a primary room with goldfish and a Nintendo DS and like being like, don't move for the next hour, please, for the love of God.

John Dehlin [01:38:11] Like

Evan Smith [01:38:13] Cheryl and I were in the

John Dehlin [01:38:14] room of Heavenly Father. Yeah, exactly.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:16] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:38:17] Cheryl and I were the next door doing, you know, know I was war mission leader for three years, getting attention from stake leaders because I would always copy the stake presidency on my missionary progress records every week. And she was serving as young women's president and things like that. Like we were, we were all in. And then once a week we're also teaching the Stake youth, the Stake YSA Institute. So I mean we were, we were very much. Church was, church was huge in our lives.

John Dehlin [01:38:40] Yeah. And in your mind, how much of it was like just pure love of Jesus and of the gospel and wanting to do your part as a Mormon and then how much it was ambitious and wanting to climb the ranks of Mormon leadership?

Evan Smith [01:38:52] That's a good question. I, I knew that I should not want to climb the ranks.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:59] Right.

Evan Smith [01:39:00] That it's bad if you want to climb, bad to aspire. So I, I genuinely tried to avoid that feeling. I really did. And I, I. Part of the experience with it not being ap. Actually now that you mentioned that made me actually say don't get excited about any calling because it may not happen. So I never, I never really had in my mind that I want this calling or that calling ever. I just was always anxious to do the best I could in any calling and to make my leaders lives easier in my callings because that's what I felt it meant to be righteous. So.

Weston Smith [01:39:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:37] And it's no coincidence that super rich, powerful Mormon attorneys often become general authorities.

Evan Smith [01:39:42] Yeah, I did that.

John Dehlin [01:39:42] Or bishops and stake presidents before their general authorities.

Evan Smith [01:39:45] Yeah, I didn't want that. I didn't want that. And part of it maybe too was also I knew that wouldn't be a great thing for Cheryl either. There was this kind of dynamic in our marriage where she was very supportive of what I wanted to do and what made me happy. But she would have liked if I was around more. And so when I thought about getting those leadership positions, I was like, it's okay, I can not have that. But to not have those leadership positions, what I should have done was not be as eager in my callings because if you want, if the Way to get those calling, leadership callings in the church is to be eager and competent.

Weston Smith [01:40:18] Right.

Evan Smith [01:40:18] If you're eager and competent, chances are you'll get. You'll get a calling like that. So I. In hindsight, maybe I should have been less eager.

John Dehlin [01:40:28] Yeah. There was this point when I was at Microsoft where we had two super young kids. I think Maya was a baby and Adrian was potty training. And I think Adrian went the bathroom on the floor and then Maya crawled up and ate it. And Margi's, like, calling me hysterical while I'm, like, working 80 hours a week at Microsoft. And I just realized, and I. This is not a platitude. I'm not trying to be condescending. Like, after years and years and years of climbing the corporate ladder completely. I was a good dad and a good husband. Margi would say that within the context of Mormonism, but still, just these women were left to way too many kids way too early with way not enough support. And I remember having just this moment where I'm like, oh, my gosh, my wife has the hardest job on the earth.

Evan Smith [01:41:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:20] And I can't believe she's in this situation where she's raising two or three super young kids without just a reasonable amount of support. And I'm. I'm almost never home.

Evan Smith [01:41:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:31] You know, I felt really bad. That stuck with me.

Evan Smith [01:41:35] I did, too. I felt those same feelings. And I remember, you know, Cheryl would call me periodically and say, you need to talk to your kids because they were just being crazy. And when, you know, dad gets on the phone, like, it means something different. Right. When. When Dad's talking to you, it's like, oh, no, I'm in. I'm in trouble. And I felt the same way, John. I felt very bad that she was having to do so much of that on her own. But at the same time, I. I tried to be around as much as I could, but I couldn't be around more than I was.

Weston Smith [01:42:03] So it was.

Evan Smith [01:42:04] It was hard.

John Dehlin [01:42:05] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about how you end up as branch president. Because that's, you know, that's. That's getting you in there to those.

Serving as Branch President and Bishop

Weston Smith [01:42:15] Up.

John Dehlin [01:42:15] Up the ladder. A little bit.

Evan Smith [01:42:17] Up the ladder. Yeah. So I. I had got called as high counselor about a year before I was called as branch president. And when I got called as high counselor, it was right on the heels of a health condition that came about.

Evan Smith [01:42:36] I had had a couple concussions that resulted in my doctor getting me an MRI that showed that I had a lesion or mass of some sort of in my brain. And we talked to several neuro oncologists and they said that 90 plus percent chance it was cancer probably had one to five years left to live.

Evan Smith [01:42:56] So in that context, I was serving as a high counselor. Right. The stake president was nice and got me a companion counselor who was a doctor who could drive me around. Cause I had a seizure because of the mass. And so I couldn't drive.

Evan Smith [01:43:10] But I was still trying to serve and do the high counselor gig. And in that context, after a year of that of not knowing exactly what was going on, what had caused the lesion, I got called as branch president. And this was after having had brain surgery to biopsy it. The doctors didn't know what it was. Best pathologist at Harvard had no idea what was causing this mass of cells that was in my brain.

Evan Smith [01:43:40] And so they referred me down to nih. And so I'd been going to NIH as part of a study of seven people who had a history of stomach issues like I had had and blood issues. I had hemolytic anemia when I was in law school and some low platelets when I was in law school.

Evan Smith [01:44:01] And later on those things continued periodically while I was working for the first few years at my job. And so that was the context in which I was asked to be branch president. And Cheryl was her response when the state president extended that calling was he's working his tail off trying to make partner. He has this health condition which we don't know really what's going on. They're trying to figure it out. I'm on experimental drugs that are sort of helping it, but we don't really know. And I just don't think this is a good idea for him to be branch president. I had been serving as a counselor in the branch presidency for a couple years by that point. But I just kind of said, yes, I'll do this. Because that's what I always say, yes to callings.

John Dehlin [01:44:50] Right. For non Mormons or never Mormons, a branch president is like a priest or a pastor or a bishop.

Evan Smith [01:44:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:58] But in a, in a Mormon congregation, if there aren't a ton of people, maybe like 300 or 400, if there's like 100 or 150.

Weston Smith [01:45:08] Right.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] You might be in what's called a branch instead of a ward. And so instead of being called a bishop, you're called a branch president, but you're still in charge of a congregation. Correct.

Evan Smith [01:45:17] Right. So it was in. We moved to Boston in 2003. We ran a war for the first five years. And in 2008, they. They siphoned off some towns from three, three wards and created a branch, the Plymouth branch.

Evan Smith [01:45:28] And I was a counselor in the branch president there for a couple years. And then I was on the high council for a year. And then I got called as branch president. And I remember when I got called Cheryl, it was before church on Sunday. The state president met with us and we went to sacrament meeting. And then Cheryl left. Sacrament meeting. In the middle of sacrament, she left and went to the bathroom and just started crying. And one of the young women in the branch, actually the current branch president's daughter, found her in there and went and told her mom. And her mom came out and this is the current branch president's wife coming in to console Cheryl.

Evan Smith [01:46:01] And she knew what it was. She just guessed. She says, is Evan going to be the next branch president? And she said, yeah, and just tried to make Cheryl feel better. So it was very hard circumstance. I continued to go to NIH on and off multiple times a year for part of the study to figure out what was going on that was causing, you know, these blood issues, stomach issues, the cells in my. In my brain and some low antibodies and things like that. They finally figured out that I have a very, very rare autoimmune disease, that I don't have a break on my immune system.

Evan Smith [01:46:36] So this is in 2014. They figured that out. They found the genetic mutation that causes it. And because of that genetic mutation, I don't have a protein that controls and limits what the immune system does. So any autoimmune disease is theoretically up for grabs for me at that time.

Evan Smith [01:46:54] So that's why I had such a wide mix of autoimmune conditions, because it's a genetic condition. This is kind of the teaser you alluded to before with my dad and his cancer. Because if it's a genetic condition, they tested my family and they found that I got it from my dad. It's an autosomal dominant condition, so 50% chance of giving it to my kids. We tested all our kids and they don't have it, which is fortunate.

Evan Smith [01:47:18] It's like flipping heads four times in a row, so we're really lucky. But that lack of a break on the immune system that was causing this, that lack of that protein that regulates the immune system. I was talking to a PhD MD friend of mine in 2015. So a year after NIH figured out what was the cause of all my problems, and the MD PhD said, hey, it's Interesting that you say that, because that's what they do for skin cancer patients. They give them gene therapy to take that protein away, to take that break off of the immune system. Because if you do that, the body responds in a way that targets melanoma specifically.

Evan Smith [01:48:02] And I was like, what? So I asked nih, I said, if my dad had four stage melanoma and just had surgery and didn't have radiation chemotherapy, and he was. He was fine. And they said, oh, well, yeah, he had. He gave you this. This genetic mutation. So, yeah, he was.

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:20] His.

Evan Smith [01:48:20] His immune system was fighting the cancer because that's just how he was born. He was born with an immune system that was wired the same way that people get genetic gene therapy to. To fight skin cancer. So, you know, that was 2015, and it was 1985 when he had his cancer, and he survived it. So. So 30 years later, it was pretty shocking.

John Dehlin [01:48:41] So did you connect those dots?

Evan Smith [01:48:43] I did.

John Dehlin [01:48:43] And did that cause you to ask any questions at a time?

Evan Smith [01:48:47] For sure, for sure. I was like, wow, this miracle that I was. This thing that I was raised thinking was a miracle my whole life, which was that my dad was healed from cancer from President Monson's blessing.

John Dehlin [01:48:55] Right.

Evan Smith [01:48:57] I thought, wow, maybe it was just science. I didn't know how to deal with that. And I remember this is where my progressive, kind of nuanced stuff comes in. I remember thinking, what is a miracle? A miracle is just something that you can't explain, right? And if you had someone 200 years ago looking at a microwave, they'd be like, whoa, that is magic. And that's a miracle.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:19] Right?

Evan Smith [01:49:19] How that heats up the food. And so, yeah, maybe President Monson was keyed in enough and knew that the science would heal my dad anyway. And so the blessing was still valid. And it was. It was. It was a miracle. Spiritually gave my dad the strength he needed to carry on, even though it was a scientifically explainable event. So that's how I kind of rationalized it, Jonathan.

John Dehlin [01:49:45] I says that it's wrong to ask the question, how can someone who's so smart still believe? Because what he actually teaches is that the smarter you are, the better equipped you are to rationalize your belief. It sounds like that's what you're doing.

Evan Smith [01:50:02] 100. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was just finding ways to believe everything, I mean, at this time.

John Dehlin [01:50:07] And that's what being a progressive religious person often means. You know, finding ways to rationalize the problems you encounter that you ignored on your way up. Right?

Evan Smith [01:50:16] Yeah. Oh, yeah. For Sure. I mean, I was a very avid student of gospel topics. I, I read Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling when it first came out.

John Dehlin [01:50:27] 05.0405, something like that.

Evan Smith [01:50:29] Yeah, that was 05. Yep. But before then, I'd even read the little smaller book that he had written that he turned into his first few chapters of Rust, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Early Mormonism, exactly where he talked about, you know, the peep stone and all that stuff. So I knew that the Book of Mormon wasn't translated with the golden plates in front of Joseph, and I was fine with that. I thought, you know, Joseph's peep stone would have been like a, a lucky rabbit's foot that gave him confidence to get inspiration. Not that it was actually like a tool that was technically working like a, you know, a conduit. But I had read Shaken Faith Syndrome by Michael Ash when it first came out, and I.

John Dehlin [01:51:04] It's a classic.

Evan Smith [01:51:05] Yeah. Yep. I didn't believe that the earth was 6,000 years old. I thought that the DNC's reference to that was just a metaphor, that the age of the earth as it pertains to the gospel. And just what matters for us is 6,000 years. Years since Adam and Eve.

Weston Smith [01:51:21] Right.

Evan Smith [01:51:22] I still believed in a literal Adam and Eve at the time. I thought that they could have existed, but I thought there was pre Adamites. You know, evolution was something that was possible. I totally believed in evolution, thought it was consistent with the gospel if you approached it the right way.

Evan Smith [01:51:37] And, you know, it wasn't until later that I've learned now that the Adam and Eve story was borrowed from Babylonian and Mesopotamian origin stories. Yeah. Put into the Bible after the fact, 500 years BCE. It was put in at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible. But, yeah, I was finding a way to nuance everything and to believe that the church, I knew the church had problems at this point. I was starting to believe this was pre the church's essay on race in the priesthood. I was believing now at this point that it was just racism. I was like, okay. I was seeing more and more how the prophets could have got things wrong and how doctrine was constantly changing because I was very into studying these things, books. I had an hour long commute every way to work. And so I would read books all the time.

John Dehlin [01:52:25] Dangerous.

Evan Smith [01:52:26] And red alert, red alert. I was a lazy learner and I, I, I believed, you know, the Book of Mormon could have been just coming through Joseph's mind. And it was, didn't mean that it wasn't Scripture, if he was telling us things, using his understanding of what he was seeing. But, you know, because it's coming through. You know, everyone sees through a lens darkly, right? Sees through glass darkly. So I thought that was okay. I actually thought that the Book of Abraham, the Catalyst theory, I remember hearing about that, reading about that a little bit before the church ever did that Book of Abraham essay.

Evan Smith [01:53:01] And so when the church's essays came out, I was all over them when they first came out. And I was. I was happy to see that the church was allowing orthodox believers to believe these things because I had felt a little guilty believing them. I was kind of quiet about them up until that point. I was like, oh, this way to approach the gospel works for me, but I don't want to talk about it too loudly because people will think I'm. You know, they'll look at me in a bad way. But now those essays came out, and I was like, yes. So when I was branch president, when the race and the priesthood essay came out, I remember talking about it shortly after it came out in a youth discussion.

Evan Smith [01:53:33] We used to have Q&As all the time as part of our youth firesides, where Cheryl and I would sit next to each other and the youth would just submit anonymous questions to us and we'd answer them. And I was really glad when someone asked a question about the priesthood ban. And I share the church's essay. And I remember some parents in that meeting didn't know about the essay. And they came up afterwards, talked to me afterwards, like, how can you teach that it was racism? And I said, well, like I said, it's in the essay. Like, the church is basically saying this now. And I said, yeah, but I don't know.

Evan Smith [01:53:59] They came back later and they said, we read that essay really closely, and I don't think it actually, I said, well, it does say it's racism. It doesn't say that there wasn't a divine reason for the racism, but it was racism. And they were like, oh, okay. And that church just needs to come out and say it was not of God. Like, they need to stop the silliness. But Matt Har.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:17] We had a historian, Matt Harris, who wrote a book about how the gospel topic essays were written, and he talked to us about the priesthood essay, and he said that intentionally, the church, the way it's worded and the way it's written is so that you can come. Come out with both. Come out of reading it with both conclusions. You can either come out concluding that it was racism. Or concluding that it was from God.

Evan Smith [01:54:43] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:44] And it kind of plays both ways.

Evan Smith [01:54:46] The essay does 100. The church doesn't want to lose butts and seats. Right. So they don't want to write an essay that's going to make anyone leave because it just. They disagree with it. So they're going to write an essay that people can read however they want.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:57] Yeah, right, right.

John Dehlin [01:54:59] What do lawyers know about that kind of language?

Evan Smith [01:55:01] Yeah, I got pretty good at doing that sort of thing.

Weston Smith [01:55:04] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember like sitting in on a lot of these discussions and I don't know, it was like a lot of the kids my age and we kind of showed me that a lot of the people my age had the same questions that I did about the gospel that like. But I think this forum was one of the only places where we could honestly ask these types of things and not be judged or shamed for it. Yeah. So we appreciated it as youth. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:31] There's this. There's this kind of progressive privilege. It's a term maybe I've never said before, but if you think about it, growing up as a Mormon in Berkeley, California, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, or even Manhattan, New York, where you have wealthy, highly educated parents, or Potomac, Maryland, where your parents are wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated, highly connected, you can have a very different experience growing up in the church than if you're raised in Draper or Sandy, you know, or Brigham City or freaking Manti, you know what I mean? And it's almost like a totally different church. But if you've got the right bishops and the right ward experience, you can grow up with like dialogues and sunstones on the coffee table. Parents, super liberal progressive views, hobnobbing with the world's elite ambassadors, you know, big time lawyers, and still hold on to your orthodox Mormonism, but in a very progressive way.

Evan Smith [01:56:42] Yeah, 100% I. Polygamy was always a question that the youth would ask in those firesides too. That almost always came up, especially with Cheryl sitting next to me. Right. And she would give her answer that she didn't understand it and didn't agree with it at all.

Evan Smith [01:56:58] I gave an answer that I had put a lot of thought into. I had a way to make it so that polygamy would not exist for anyone in the celestial kingdom. And I always caveated this to the youth, that this is just my opinion. My opinion. Right. But I would say you look at the only. I always tell the youth too, that the only binding doctrine of the church is what's in the scriptures, what's canonized I said everything else is kind of up for grabs. Right. And that's from the church's website. That's how I approached my progressive kind of approach to Mormonism. Was even on the church's website.

Evan Smith [01:57:29] There's what is doctrine page, and it cites a Michael Ash article that says until something is submitted to a vote by common consent of the general membership, until it's essentially canonized, it's not binding doctrine. It's just a teaching from. From one of the brethren that you have to pay attention to. But that's it.

John Dehlin [01:57:45] So the thing is, even when that happens, it's still not doctrine. So like there was a really important Remy Umptum ruminations episode recently about in modern times. And I don't mean to get off track, but the brethren have. Have realized that they have no idea what doctrine actually is because obviously Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith was doctrine before it wasn't. The General. The journal Discourses were doctrine before they weren't. Yeah, the. Bruce Armaconki's Mormon doctrine was doctrine before it wasn't.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:16] Lectures on Faith.

Evan Smith [01:58:17] Lectures on Faith is the close. Yeah, that. Because that was almost canon right before.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:21] Yeah, it was. And he was taken out without. Without the vote.

John Dehlin [01:58:24] Well, we just got done talking about the blacks in the priesthood racism kind of thing. Well, there were multiple first presidency statements signed. Was that not doctrine when the First Presidency signed statements like based on the

Evan Smith [01:58:37] definition I was using, John. No, because it wasn't canonized.

John Dehlin [01:58:40] But that's. That's revisionist history. It is trying to lower the bar so that literally you have no idea what doctrine is because the Scriptures themselves contradict each other.

Evan Smith [01:58:49] Right.

John Dehlin [01:58:49] And so if the Scriptures can contradict each other and a First presidency statement isn't quite reach the threshold of doctrine, and. And if core doctrines can be reversed, like polygamy or paused or the priesthood band could be lifted, literally anything goes. Am I wrong?

Evan Smith [01:59:07] No, no, it's totally true. And the Scriptures contradict each other. And so you're able to choose whichever interpretation. If you take the approach I was taking, whatever interpretation makes the most sense to you. And then you have if an apostle is teaching an interpretation of a scripture, but that interpretation has not canonized itself, I don't have to follow that.

Gerardo Sumano [01:59:26] Yeah, right.

Evan Smith [01:59:27] So I was very just like, hey, you know, let's be only viewing what's strictly canonized as doctrine. And so I used to say to the youth on polygamy, the only explanation in canon, the only reason given in canon for it is in Jacob chapter two. Where it says, if I want to raise up a righteous seed. And I used to say to them, it's not about having more kids because 10 women married to 10 men can have 10 babies. 10 women married to one man can have 10 babies. The number of babies is the same. It's the number of babies that you put into righteous homes.

Evan Smith [01:59:58] So that's the only explanation. And in the celestial kingdom, all of the celestial exalted parents are righteous homes. So they're all going to have children, spiritual children that are coming to them. The rationale that the scripture gives for polygamy does not make sense in heaven. And then I also used to tell them that in the celestial kingdom, you only live by what are the standard laws. Right.

Evan Smith [02:00:24] So we all know that, for example, consecration is the celestial law and tithing is the mortality only law. Right. So in the scriptures you have standard law, consecration, exception, tithing. I said, well, if you read Jacob chapter two, it says very clearly the standard law is monogamy. And the exception if God wants to raise up a righteous seed is polygamy. And I said, he only used that when he's starting the church. Like you look in the Bible and it's Israel starting the tribes of Israel starting that. That's when he does it. And then uses it now in modern times to start the church.

Evan Smith [02:00:59] But I said, that's a mortality only reason. It will not exist for anyone in the celestial kingdom, in my opinion. I always said it was in my opinion. And the youth liked that. They liked that answer, that they didn't have to worry about polygamy being something that would ever come back even after this life. So again, huge conjecture on my part, but it made sense to me. So.

John Dehlin [02:01:20] Yeah, you were becoming a super progressive Mormon leader.

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:25] And I'm sure a lot of those eastern seaboard Mormons with smart, educated parents were digging it.

Evan Smith [02:01:33] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think a lot of our war didn't necessarily have the, we weren't in the, in the, the parts of Boston that had those super more blue colors. Yeah, it was a little more blue collar area that we were raised.

Weston Smith [02:01:48] You know, our town was one of the only towns that's consistently voted red in Massachusetts. Okay. So it's like very rural and so.

Evan Smith [02:01:55] Oh, we share a lot of, a lot of conservatives.

John Dehlin [02:01:58] Okay. Let me say young kids are smart these days and progressive and insightful and moral. And I'm sure the kids love not having to believe quite as racist or quite as sexist doctrine.

Evan Smith [02:02:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:02:12] As you were.

Evan Smith [02:02:13] And I was Trying to inoculate them. Right. Based on Elder Ballard's statement about trying to teach the youth of today what's in the gospel topic essays and seminary. And I was trying to give them a foundation where if they bumped across these things in the future, they would have stuff to be able to react to it. And it would inoculate them to the criticisms that they would get when they come across these, because I guarantee you, they would come across polygamy and racism charged at them on the Internet or otherwise, or from friends or otherwise, because they were Mormon. And so I wanted to give them tools to combat that.

John Dehlin [02:02:48] Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Okay, let's go back a little bit because we've kind of jumped forward in the story to what, 2013, 2014. If we're talking about gospel topics essays, I want to go back in the time machine because you talk about in your essay even once you've moved to Massachusetts, like being glad George Bush, you know. Oh, yeah. You know, talk about your views on same sex marriage and LGBT stuff and your evolution as, you know, a graduate from law school, still Mormon, but still kind of being anti LGBT affirming policies.

Reckoning With Polygamy, Racism, and Same-Sex Marriage

Evan Smith [02:03:34] So in, you know, in. In 2008, when Prop 8 happened, I.

John Dehlin [02:03:39] You were where?

Evan Smith [02:03:40] I was in Massachusetts, in Boston. I was serving as the second counselor in the branch presidency at that time. When Prop 8 happened, I didn't. I wasn't really bothered by it. I didn't understand why some members in the area were so upset. I thought that trying to prevent gay marriage from becoming legal was a good thing. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:07] Are you feeling.

Weston Smith [02:04:08] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:04:09] I just regret how I was, John. I was a. I don't know. I don't want to swear on this, but I was. I was an. I just, I just was. I

John Dehlin [02:04:21] talk about that. I mean, you're being vulnerable, but don't be hesitant to dig into that because there's other people that might benefit.

Evan Smith [02:04:29] I was, I mean, when George Bush got elected in 2004, I was happy that they used gay marriage as a strategy to get people to the polls. Right. And I just was a. I, I did so much critical thinking in other areas of the gospel, but I had just the homophobia in me from when I was. I didn't think there was anything wrong with being what I now know is homophobic. I thought that was good. Right. I got to certain positions on women in the priesthood and on blacks and the priesthood and that it took me longer to get there on gay marriage. And I hate that I was that way. I hate that I had that upbringing where I thought that that was less important than other areas.

Weston Smith [02:05:23] So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:25] How did that evolve? How did it perpetuate? And.

Evan Smith [02:05:29] Yeah, and thanks for your vulnerability talking to other colleagues at work during the whole gay marriage debate.

John Dehlin [02:05:36] Because Romney, who was governor of Massachusetts, I think he was friendly to same sex marriage, right?

Evan Smith [02:05:42] Yeah, yeah, he was. It was in 2004, Massachusetts Supreme Court leaked legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts.

John Dehlin [02:05:48] What'd you think about that as a Mormon attorney?

Evan Smith [02:05:51] I was, I was bummed by it, honestly.

John Dehlin [02:05:53] Really.

Evan Smith [02:05:53] It was 2004, same year Bush got elected.

John Dehlin [02:05:55] Right.

Evan Smith [02:05:56] I was, I was like, ugh, I'm living in this state, you know, I was like, oh, I live in this Massachusetts. Like, I was, I was a conservative swimming upstream in Massachusetts at the time.

John Dehlin [02:06:06] But Romney was a Republican.

Evan Smith [02:06:07] I know. I actually, I actually liked looking at Romney and saying, oh, there's a way that you can, you can make it all work here in Massachusetts. Right. And so I, I didn't talk about it much with my colleagues, but the few times that I did, they started helping me see that from a legal perspective, there wasn't really any reason to. To not have gay marriage be a good thing for society. From a governmental, societal perspective, you know, it was fine. But from a religious perspective, I, I still had problems with it, so. But eventually, over all those years, I got to the point probably in 2013, where I was open to the idea that gay marriage was. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:06:49] Wait, so with Prop 8 itself, you were like, go gung ho church.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:54] Take that same sex marriage away from those Californians.

Evan Smith [02:06:57] Yeah, Yeah, I was. Five years later, 2013, I'm serving as branch president, and I have now softened that view from a political or legal perspective.

Weston Smith [02:07:10] Right.

Evan Smith [02:07:11] But not really from a religious one.

John Dehlin [02:07:13] So your legal perspective was what? There's no good reason to deny.

Evan Smith [02:07:17] There's no good reason to deny.

John Dehlin [02:07:18] Okay.

Evan Smith [02:07:19] Same sex marriage. I was okay with it legally. From a religious perspective, I still thought, you know, it's contrary to the gospel. Like, it's all about becoming like our heavenly, heavenly parents. And, you know, you don't know if heavenly, heavenly parents aren't, aren't gay. They're, you know, a man and a woman, exalted man, exalted woman. Like, so I was still very much like, no, it's contrary to the gospel.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:36] Would you have thought that it was curable, that it could be fixed that gay people should just marry and mix, mix orientation marriages? What was the solution?

Evan Smith [02:07:50] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:50] So your mind,

Evan Smith [02:07:54] before I had a young man who was 14 come to me and tell me that he thought he was gay. He didn't use those words, but that's what he's essentially saying. I didn't really give much thought to that, whether it was curable or something like that. I kind of thought, no one is. No one is. No one is. Almost like the David Bednar approach where there aren't anyone. No one's gay. Right. There aren't homosexuals in the church.

Weston Smith [02:08:21] Right.

John Dehlin [02:08:21] You're not born.

Evan Smith [02:08:22] That we are. What we choose to do is kind of what I had thought was my. My approach.

Weston Smith [02:08:27] Right.

Evan Smith [02:08:30] But then that kid. I had a 14 year old kid, same age as Wes, like one of us's friends, the same teachers quorum, same teachers quorum at the time, who told me what he was feeling. And I. That floored me because I saw this kid that I had known since he was a toddler, and I was like, whoa. I. I'm sitting here, he's crying, and I'm. I'm asking kind of the probing questions of like, are you. Are you doing something that's making you think this way? Are you. Are you sinning in any other way?

Weston Smith [02:08:58] Like, what.

Evan Smith [02:08:58] What's going on? Right. And he would just answer me like, no, I'm not. And I knew he wasn't doing anything. He was just a.

Weston Smith [02:09:04] He's very, like, textbook, kind of very pure, very innocent. You know him?

John Dehlin [02:09:10] Weston?

Weston Smith [02:09:11] Yes. Yeah, I was. He was one of my really good friends in teacher's quorum, and we're still pretty close. So.

John Dehlin [02:09:16] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:09:17] And I. That made me just kind of go, I gotta understand this better. And so then I started researching.

John Dehlin [02:09:23] You were branch president by the branch president.

Evan Smith [02:09:25] Yep, I've been branch president for two years.

John Dehlin [02:09:27] So a kid basically comes out to you as gay Mormon kid in your ward branch, who you'd known for how long?

Evan Smith [02:09:34] Since he was a toddler. He was in our prior ward. You know, we changed from the war to the branch when they made the change.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:39] He.

Evan Smith [02:09:39] I'd known him for. Yeah. Since he was like 2.

John Dehlin [02:09:41] And he was close friends with your son?

Weston Smith [02:09:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:44] Yep. So that. That all of a sudden, that's it. It makes it personal. Right?

Evan Smith [02:09:48] No, One of them, for me, I'm like. I'm like, all right. This is not something he's choosing to feel. Because I could talk to him and I heard him. And I heard him cry about it. He wished he didn't. And I was like, wow, I need to understand where this is coming from. So I just researched sexual orientation a lot. What the church taught about it, what it used to teach about it, the scientific origin of, you know, where. Where sexual orientation comes from. I bumped into. I can't. Found Bill Bradshaw's YouTube video. He's the BYU professor who taught him. Taught about it. Former stake president, Michigan.

John Dehlin [02:10:19] Not my interview with him, but no,

Evan Smith [02:10:21] he was his lecture in class, right. Where he talked about that. And I remember he. He like, quotes Elder Oaks at one point where he's saying, like, something about nature and nurture and. And Professor Bradshaw says, I. My opinion is clear. It is nature, not nurture. I was like, wow, okay, this is, you know, that meant a lot to me. I found your video, John, your TED Talk about two weeks after I'd met with that young man. And that made me see that you can be an ally and be Mormon. And I was like, wow, I didn't know you could do that. And so I was softening and realizing that I needed to help this kid realize that he could choose whatever path he wanted to in life and still be loved, and he didn't need to be ashamed of being.

Evan Smith [02:11:02] Being gay. So I was trying to counsel with him in those regards. I did counsel with him probably for the next year and a half. About once every other month, we would meet and talk to me how he's doing.

John Dehlin [02:11:12] Did you talk to his parents? Did you keep that confidential?

Evan Smith [02:11:15] Nope. Kept it confidential. He didn't. He didn't want to talk to anybody about it, so.

Weston Smith [02:11:20] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:11:21] Yeah. So you kind of mentored him a little bit.

Evan Smith [02:11:23] A little bit. We had a. It was, I think a few months after he came out, after. After he talked to me, he didn't come out, but when he talked to me about was in 2013 when a judge here in Utah ruled that Utah's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was illegal.

John Dehlin [02:11:42] Judge Shelby?

Evan Smith [02:11:43] Yeah, I don't. I didn't. Yeah, I don't know, but I did that. When that happened, the church, I remember First Presidency issued a letter. They, you know, they send out letters to bishops and branch presidents all the time. They send out a letter urging people, urging, you know, bishops and branch presidents to reiterate the church's position on gay marriage. And so I looked at that and I was like, oh, sweet. I have a chance now to actually educate the ward or educate the branch. And I have this young man who's going to hear me publicly educate the branch and teach the members of the branch that being loving and kind to gay members of the church is what we should be doing. And so it was funny because I looked at that instruction from the first presidency as a way for me to help branch members become a little more progressive.

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:28] I do have a question. So as you're counseling this young man, what did you see for him in the future? Like, yeah, you know, were you counseling to be celibate? Him to be celibate?

Evan Smith [02:12:43] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:12:44] Yep.

Evan Smith [02:12:45] I regret that. I. I huge regret for that. I told him that's what the church wants you to do, and that's what God wants. But I emphasize this a lot, so I don't regret this part. I said, if you don't do that, I will love you no different. And I don't think you're gonna have anyone else in your life love you any different, and you're gonna have support. And I don't know how God will view it. So I was at least that open enough like that. Like, I was at least able to say, I don't know how God views it. I know what the teaching of the church are, so I know what God thinks on one side, but on the other path, if you don't do that, I don't know. So. But whatever you do, I love you.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:28] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:13:28] I wish I had. I wish I had done a better job of telling him, get out. Just live according to who you are. Find someone to love, have that in your life. Be healthy, be happy, and God will celebrate that. I wish that that's what I had done.

John Dehlin [02:13:47] Let me ask, is it hard for you to be recounting these stories in front of Weston, your son?

Evan Smith [02:13:53] Yeah, I think there's some details I haven't ever shared, and it's hard.

Weston Smith [02:14:00] I will say. Well, I recognize how hard it is for you. I've never personally, you know, held any bad blood against him for any of the stuff he said. Even some of the stuff I remember him saying as a kid during, like, the, you know, the Glenn Beck era.

Evan Smith [02:14:17] I used to watch Glenn Beck.

Weston Smith [02:14:18] Yeah. And that's because it was just like kind of society as a whole. That's what it was like. Or at least that's how it felt for me. It's like I. I don't know. I. It's like I couldn't hold him accountable for not being super accepting when, like, everyone else in society hadn't really gotten there yet. And so it's just. It's like I'm very grateful that he's, you know, so remorseful about this. But for me, it's something that's like, I can't. I can't fault the individual when, you know, there's so much more societal stuff. At play.

Evan Smith [02:14:55] See, I. What you just said is what I hear so many gay people say. They're so kind and so given benefit of the doubt. They don't fault their parents. They don't fault people who are homophobic, because that's just how it is.

Evan Smith [02:15:09] And I think that needs to change. That's one of the things I'm super proud of Wes for with his book. It was hard to read as a parent, but I'm glad he didn't pull any punches. And he's just like, this is how I was feeling at the time. And as a dad, I'm reading that going, I missed so many cues and I failed, and I did this. And I know it was hard for Cheryl to read, too, but I'm glad that there's some brutal honesty so that the higher ground isn't always taken on the one side. Right. I mean, I appreciate what you're saying, Wes, and I love you for it, and I'm really happy that you feel that way. But I think.

John Dehlin [02:15:42] What do you feel?

Evan Smith [02:15:44] I think more parents and leaders should be aware of the intense pain and hardship and trauma that is felt by LGBTQ members of the church. And if that, if they were more aware of that, because I wasn't, I think that the decisions and the counseling would be quite different than it is. So I'm really proud of Wes for writing his book.

John Dehlin [02:16:10] So basically, Wes is saying, it's systems, not people. And basically Evan's saying, hey, people, wake up. Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:16:16] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:16:17] Yes.

Weston Smith [02:16:18] To me, it's kind of just like if parents apologizing for being homophobic, it's like someone apologizing for this guy being blue. Right? It's just like, that's kind of how it is. And even, even living where I live now in Toronto, like, and having friend group that's my age, like all this, these diverse backgrounds, most of them still have, most of them are queer and have their own problems coming out. And so it really is just like, you know, how can you blame all, everyone in society? It's like, you're not going to have anyone left who's like, like, who, who's really, you know, free of sin, for lack of a better term.

Evan Smith [02:16:53] So, yeah, Yeah, I don't know.

Weston Smith [02:16:58] It's. It's hard.

Evan Smith [02:16:59] Anyway, I, I, I was glad I was able to teach that combined lesson with the.

John Dehlin [02:17:03] Oh, yeah, John, I was going to say, Gerardo, isn't this kind of every young gay Mormon's Mormon boy or girl's dream to have this type of reflective conversation with their parent?

Gerardo Sumano [02:17:16] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:17:18] I'm wondering what it's like for you to hear this, if you want to share.

Gerardo Sumano [02:17:25] I think everybody has just different experiences. Right. Like, I have different parents and. But I'm glad I've been able to reconcile, like, my experiences growing up with. With my dad now. And he's a lot more understanding and. And he definitely has changed his views and just, like, I don't hold any

Evan Smith [02:17:51] grudge on him, so. Because you're a good guy.

Gerardo Sumano [02:17:55] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:17:55] There's so much goodness I see in that position that's taken by most gay people I talk to. They're like, hey, don't hold it against you. And I wish. I'm glad they feel that. And it's a huge example to me, and I admire that, and I love it. But I also wish there was some more accountability for it.

John Dehlin [02:18:13] I mean, the only reason I'm bringing all this up is I, you know, I grew up. I'm a little older than you are. Like, I grew up in a time when my cousins Dan and Sam came out as gay.

John Dehlin [02:18:23] You know, they were my Uncle Blaine's two kids. They moved across the country to Cambridge, you know, and just disappeared from the family. Stopped coming to family reunions. Probably never talked to their dad about it. But if they did, it would not have been like this, and they would have just been cut off from their Mormon heritage for a few decades. That's. And that. And they had privilege. They didn't go other places. A lot less healthy. And in 2022, we're. I mean, Mormonism, Mormon culture, as far as it still needs to go, it's come a long way has. Because you were, you know, you were a branch president, bishop, active in the church, having a more positive interaction with an lgbt. And this is only a couple years ago. It's not like this was.

Evan Smith [02:19:15] Well, nine years ago. Yeah, 2013 was this time nine years ago.

John Dehlin [02:19:19] That's amazing.

Evan Smith [02:19:20] Yeah, it was, I think, 2011 when the church had come out with the. At the time, it was the mormons and gays.org website. And then it got changed to mormon and gay.org so it wasn't as divisive. And now it's just the. The same sex attraction topic on the church's website.

John Dehlin [02:19:33] Now they've deleted that website altogether.

Weston Smith [02:19:35] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:19:35] Well, I think you can still find it if you do Mormon and gay, like, routes you to it. Really?

Gerardo Sumano [02:19:39] Yeah. You have to go.

Weston Smith [02:19:40] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:19:42] Rewrite.

Evan Smith [02:19:42] Mormoningay.org reroutes you to the same sex attraction topic on the church's website.

John Dehlin [02:19:46] In other words, the content that they created for that Mormon and gays website is all. It's still there.

Gerardo Sumano [02:19:52] A lot of.

Weston Smith [02:19:52] It's still. It's still there.

Evan Smith [02:19:53] They.

John Dehlin [02:19:54] They still videos and the testimony.

Evan Smith [02:19:56] Well, some of those videos are taken down because all those people have come out. Yeah, they've changed. A lot of those people that were in those videos have changed, have left the church. So some of those videos are taken down, but they still have the statement on there, which is the one I really emphasized in my discussion with the branch, which is Elder Ballard's statement that says, you know, same sex attraction is not a choice. And I don't think members of the branch knew that. So I was trying to. I knew members of the branch didn't understand that and I wanted them to understand that's still there.

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:22] That means a change. Right. From what you would have been taught general authorities in the 90s.

John Dehlin [02:20:28] But just to have the feelings is a sin. Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:20:31] Oh yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:32] And a choice.

Evan Smith [02:20:33] Yeah. I remember I mentioned in the presentation to the branch that President Kimball's book said it wasn't. It was a choice to have the feelings and that was a sin to feel that way. I said, so here you have a prophet saying something and now you have the church officially on this website saying, hey, this has changed. So I said, we need to be open to realize that doctrine can change. And that ruffled some branch members feathers. They came up to me afterwards and talked to me about that. But I was, I was committed to showing that young man without outing him, without saying anything. I wanted him to hear that we had an obligation to be more open minded and more loving discussion.

John Dehlin [02:21:10] And really quick, Weston, you knowing this kid, what's it like to hear the fact that. Did you know what your dad ended up knowing as a branch president? Are you wanting or able to share?

Weston Smith [02:21:24] So I was kind of so self absorbed during this time with my own internal issues that I did not notice at all. I think everyone else in the ward kind of knew because of just about your friend. Yes, just because of gaydar. And he was a little bit more flamboyant and that kind of stuff.

Weston Smith [02:21:42] So by the time, especially by the time I think he was like graduating high school, I think most people were pretty aware of it, but I don't know. I remember having conversations with my mom and her being like, you really didn't know this whole time? I was like, no, there's another, like there's another person in the ward. And yeah, so yeah, I remember having these third hour things and having Them be having them resonate with me. But I wasn't quite sure why they were resonating with me so much because I wasn't even out to myself yet. Even though I was having a lot of those feelings, had crush on a guy, I was not out to myself about any of this. And so it was still very, like I said, very self absorbed, very kind of working out all my own stuff. So.

John Dehlin [02:22:37] Yeah, well, let's. I mean, this is starting to reach the ending of this part one.

Evan Smith [02:22:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:44] And I want to end with the cliffhanger of, of kind of Weston coming out to you while you're bishop. So take us, take us to both of you. Take us to that point.

Evan Smith [02:22:56] All right, so 2013, I, I did the, the first of a, of a 2/3rd hour long. So it was. They had 3 hours of church that time. So it was during the third hour. Combined young men, young women, released society, one Kazakh priest, like the whole, you know, everybody was there on lgbt, on gay marriage. That was the first of the two I did. The second one I did was in 2015, which was a couple months after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, because the first presidency this time actually required that bishops and branch presidents reiterate the church's position on gay marriage, that it hadn't changed, even though the court had just legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Gerardo Sumano [02:23:32] And there was a statement, I think, that you had to read.

Evan Smith [02:23:34] You had to read a statement, and it's pretty awesome.

Weston Smith [02:23:36] Something I remember about this was having, because I was, this is like right in this kind of area in between 2013 and 2015 was when I finally came out to myself and realized, okay, you know, I'm gay. This is something that's happening. And I remember being in Canada because I went up to Canada for the summers to live with my grandparents, and the news broke. And I remember scrolling through Twitter just liking tweet after tweet from like President Obama, from all these different people saying, like, love is love. Love wins. And feeling so excited that Saturday. And so like, you know, the world is moving in the right direction.

Weston Smith [02:24:08] Like, I'm, I'm, you know, just really happy. And then getting to the pulpit the next next Sunday. And even in Canada, they read this or, you know, where it's been legalized for like over a decade at that point. And they read it and over the pulpit about how the church's position on this isn't going to change and how like the, the very coded language being like, it's never going to be okay to be gay. In the church. Like, stop. Stop getting your hopes up just because everything's getting legalized. It, like, the coded language there was like, yeah, shut it down. Shut down. Shut down your. Your excitement. And so I did. I was.

John Dehlin [02:24:40] How old were you at that point?

Weston Smith [02:24:41] I would have been 16.

Evan Smith [02:24:42] 16.

Weston Smith [02:24:43] Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:24:44] So he was actually in Canada when I did my second discussion with the

Weston Smith [02:24:47] ward, but he sent the details of it to me, like as a PDF.

Evan Smith [02:24:51] I emailed him and I said, hey, here's what I talked about with the ward. Because at that point, I was trying to make sure my kids knew that I had liberal positions on some of these things, just in case. No, just I wanted to keep them in the church. And so the way I could keep them in the church was to say, I think that women should have the priesthood. I think gay marriage should be allowed. I think, you know, the blacks and priesthood thing was a racist mistake that should never happen.

John Dehlin [02:25:16] Wait, a sense that teaching your children progressive Mormon ideology would help keep them in the church. By inoculation or what?

Evan Smith [02:25:25] Yeah, by. By realizing that you didn't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. That, you know, you could pick and choose. Right. I was. I was fine with cafeteria Mormonism. And the only thing that I felt was fundamental to Mormonism was. Was charity. I emphasized that in every talk I gave as a bishop, in every lesson I gave. I always, always, always talked about charity because I felt like that was the core of the gospel. And all the rest of this was just periphery.

Weston Smith [02:25:50] Yeah. And that's really what sunk into, I think all four of us as kids was that, you know, no matter what kind of lens you looked at the gospel, the most important thing was the Savior's love for, you know, mankind and then also our love for other people. Like, I think, you know, we were. His catchphrase growing up for us was like, I don't care what you do, just be nice and get good grades. Like, that's. That was kind of the mantra. And so it was. We were always.

Weston Smith [02:26:22] It was always like a love first kind of expectation. And the reason that, like, I think all of us stayed in the gospel, aside from, like, all the social pressure and, like, having friends and stuff like that, the reason all four of us as kids were so willing to stay was because, at least for me personally, I know it was because I believe that the church was good at inducing love in others. Right. And in inspiring me to be a more loving person towards others. And that was kind of like more. I mean, we'll get into that more later when I talk about my stuff.

Evan Smith [02:26:53] But yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:55] You had a nickname as bishop.

Evan Smith [02:26:56] Bishop Charity. The youth used to call me Bishop Charity. It kind of rolled their eyes because every time I would give a talk or a lesson or anything like that and I would mention charity that it'd be like, you'd see people give each other thumbs up because, like, so and so had a bed when I would say it first or something like that,

Weston Smith [02:27:09] because it would be something about something totally unrelated, and you would somehow loop it back around in this like I did. Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:27:16] I would try to always find ways that whatever teaching we were following in the church had an undercurrent of charity. And if you couldn't find, find and focus on the undercurrent of charity and loving others in why you were paying your tithing or why you were doing anything, then you were doing it wrong. And you needed to have that focus on love first and foremost. I thought that charity was more important than ordinances. Said if there's some guy on the street who's more loving than you just because you've been baptized, he's more Christlike.

Weston Comes Out to Evan as His Bishop

John Dehlin [02:27:44] So how had your teachings as branch president and then Mormon bishop evolved around LGBT issues, the church doctrine, same sex marriage, by the time Weston felt ready to come out to you?

Evan Smith [02:28:01] Yeah, I mean, by that time, our branch had become a ward. I was bishop, and I felt over those two years that I'd. Since that young man had first come come to me, I progressed like 180. I was 100%. The church needs to allow for gay marriage. You know, church needs to allow for gay ceilings. I had read Taylor Petrie's article Toward a Post Heterosexual Theology, and it talks in there about how, you know, the earth was created by two male beings, Jehovah and Michael, and how there were sealings between men in the early days of the church. Not gay ceilings, but still two men were sealed to one another in the law of adoption and other places, other things, families were sealed to each other.

Evan Smith [02:28:44] And about how the sealing ordinance maybe wasn't necessarily only about sealing, you know, man and woman, but a sealing all of humanity and how we just don't know how spiritual procreation happens. So in my mind, I was like, well, hey, we can totally get to having gay ceilings. So, yeah, when Wes came out to me, it was a few months after marriage equality was legalized in the States, a few months after we become a ward, it was in September of 2015.

Evan Smith [02:29:17] I was like, hey, I was okay with him leaving the church in My mind if he needed to. But I also, again, that Throw the baby out with the bathwater. I was like, you know, you need to make sure that you're not giving up something you love if you leave the church. But if you need to, whatever you need to do, I'm here for you. And it doesn't. I think when he, when he came out to me, I said, I regret saying this, but I was like, are you sure?

Weston Smith [02:29:45] Okay, well, let you tell it, and I'll tell you. Tell it from my story, because I have a different perspective on it.

Evan Smith [02:29:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:51] Let me ask you this. As you're getting more and more progressive.

Evan Smith [02:29:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:55] As you're really. Your heart's changing on something you'd been quite homophobic about for many decades.

Weston Smith [02:30:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:03] Did you have any idea in your mind as a Mormon bishop that you would be ultimately sending messages and. Or ministering to one of your own children?

Evan Smith [02:30:12] I had no idea. I was really grateful for that. I kind of looked at it as maybe God at the time. I was like, God was blessing my family by that young man coming to me two years before so that I could get a softened heart and a more expansive mind to be ready for Wes to come out. Because I didn't know. I used to ask Cheryl every once in a while when he was little, you think Wes is gay just because he, you know, I don't want to, like, generalize, you know, gay people, but I would see some mannerisms or something.

Weston Smith [02:30:43] I was running around the backyard like a deer, like a parent or something

Evan Smith [02:30:46] like that, prancing around, and I was like. And she would say no, because she knew how homophobic I was, but she kind of knew. She always knew. But I, I, I, I had no idea. And I'm so grateful that the path that I kind of followed was, I think, one that was helpful for us. I still wish he didn't do a mission, but I. At least I.

John Dehlin [02:31:10] Let's not get ahead.

Evan Smith [02:31:11] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:31:11] Yeah. Spoilers. Spoilers. So.

John Dehlin [02:31:13] So tell us from your point of view what it was like to have him come out. And then we'll break, and then we'll have. We'll go back to his story and. And then we'll have him retell the story, like, as a, As a parallel scene. Okay.

Evan Smith [02:31:30] From my point of view, when he came out, I Was it at home.

John Dehlin [02:31:34] Was it.

Evan Smith [02:31:34] We were in the car. We were in the car driving. He had a girlfriend. And I think that might have been why I said, are you sure? Because I asked him. I said, when you kiss Amanda like, there's no reaction, like, what.

Weston Smith [02:31:45] What is?

Evan Smith [02:31:46] And he's like, no, dad, there's not. And a lot of me, I was asking him, in part because it's not that I didn't believe him. I was trying to understand if he was bisexual or kind of where he was. But I also remember thinking I was sad, not because he was gay, but because he was gonna have challenges that my other kids wouldn't be having, if that makes sense. Not because of who he is, but because of how the world and how the church are towards who he is, if that makes sense. So I was sad that he would have to deal with other people's view of him in a way that I knew my other kids wouldn't, and that. That kind of made me sad.

John Dehlin [02:32:28] So you're driving in the car. You've been branch president bishop for how long?

Evan Smith [02:32:33] I've been branch president, you know, branch president from 2011 to 2013. No, sorry. 2011 to 2015. And then 2015 and 2016. I was bishop, so about five years.

John Dehlin [02:32:46] You've been branch president or bishop at that point?

Evan Smith [02:32:48] I'd been branch president for almost five years. Branch president, slash, bishop for almost five years. I've been bishop for a few months by that point.

John Dehlin [02:32:54] And you're how old?

Evan Smith [02:32:56] Oh, at that point? I was 2015. So 40? No, 39.

John Dehlin [02:33:01] Okay. And he. And you're how old?

Weston Smith [02:33:03] 16.

John Dehlin [02:33:04] You're 16. Okay. And. Just tell us the story. Don't analyze it. I just want to hear the story.

Evan Smith [02:33:10] He.

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:11] He.

Evan Smith [02:33:11] You know, we're driving, and I. I don't know where we were coming from or where. But he just said, dad, I need to tell you something. I'm. I. I'm gay. He just said it just like that. And I said, are you sure? And then he said, yeah, I don't have it. I said, kissing. Do you have those? He said, no, I don't. Not at all. And I said, I love you. It doesn't change anything. You know I love you. And I don't remember what else I might have said, but I think I focused mostly on that.

John Dehlin [02:33:38] You don't have to answer.

Evan Smith [02:33:39] Oh, I remember. We did talk.

John Dehlin [02:33:40] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:33:41] No, I was. I.

Weston Smith [02:33:42] Actually, this is the part that he didn't mention.

John Dehlin [02:33:47] We can come back to it in your story if you want to leave

Weston Smith [02:33:49] it as a cliffhanger. It's very. It's a pretty funny comment, and it tells you a lot about my dad. So maybe. Maybe we could. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:33:55] Let me ask you. Let's. Let's Save it. It's kind of fun to hear your view of it.

Evan Smith [02:33:59] Yeah. I always forget this part, but I'm. I'm glad you're gonna say it.

John Dehlin [02:34:02] You can say what you remember.

Evan Smith [02:34:04] No, I.

John Dehlin [02:34:04] We'll.

Weston Smith [02:34:04] We'll.

Evan Smith [02:34:05] We'll come back.

Weston Smith [02:34:05] We'll come back.

John Dehlin [02:34:06] What about the voice in your head where it's like, I'm a Mormon bishop and I've got not only this whole congregation, that looks to me, I'm supposed to have raised my kids. Right. Plus I've got a stake president and other leaders looking at me. And now there are hundreds, if not over a thousand people, plus my family, my parents and my friends and family and siblings and aunts and uncles back home.

Evan Smith [02:34:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:33] And now, I mean, so many people in your position would just have. Maybe even it would strike terror in their hearts about how. How am I going to let the ward members know? How am I going to let. Even if you're for it, how am I going to let my parents know how we get my in laws know? How am I going to let my siblings know? Let's all the ward members. My stake presidency, my stake leaders, like fear, I imagine, or horror from a Mormon leadership standpoint and from a good Mormon orthodox boy standpoint.

Evan Smith [02:35:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:05] Did you have those thoughts or not?

Evan Smith [02:35:07] Yeah. Yeah, I did. But they were secondary. Right. They weren't in the, in the forefront of my mind, but they were there. But I thought about. So when I started realizing where the church needed to go, I was kind of talking about those views in my private life to a lot of people. It wasn't just when I was giving these lessons to the branch or to the ward. I was only. I was abiding by the. I was following the line. I didn't cross any lines. I did what the church doctrine taught and what the church's website was teaching, and that's all I focused on.

John Dehlin [02:35:43] Right.

Evan Smith [02:35:43] As far as I could go. But in my private conversations with my family, including my parents and my extended. My brothers and my sister, and with. With Cheryl's siblings and parents, I was sharing stuff like I share, you know, her. Her sister. Cheryl. Sister is the one who gave me Taylor Petrie's article. I shared that with my family. I was. I was doing pretty out there. Yeah, I know.

Weston Smith [02:36:06] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:36:06] It's really. Yeah. And I was doing things all the way along to try and show, look, here's what I'm learning, family. Here are these things I'm learning. And here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I'M viewing. And so, you know, in a way, when Wes came out, I thought to myself, I'm so glad I did that. Over these last two years, I'm so glad I've been. Been kind of prepping my family, in a sense.

Weston Smith [02:36:24] Marinating them.

Evan Smith [02:36:25] Yeah, marinating. Marinating there. Yeah. And as far as the leadership in the. In the ward and stake and stuff, I. I kind of thought this is a good opportunity for me to help push things in. Actually, I was like, I'm glad I'm bishop, because unfortunately, in Mormonism, people pay more attention to what a bishop says than to what someone else might say. And so I said, hey, if this gives me a greater pulpit to be able to argue for love and for acceptance and for change, then cool, that's great.

John Dehlin [02:36:56] So primarily it was love and support my son.

Evan Smith [02:36:59] Love and support my son and secondarily get my family to the extent they need to be to the same place and get the church to the extent I can to the same place. I knew I couldn't change doctrine. I knew, but I could change hearts and minds along the way. That was. That was like, okay, this is it. Let's dig in.

Weston Smith [02:37:15] So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:18] All right, well, anything else we want to add to this part one before we kind of pause your story, Evan, and then go back and hear Weston's story?

Evan Smith [02:37:30] No, I think we hit it.

John Dehlin [02:37:31] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:37:32] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:33] All right, well, thanks, everyone. Well, thank you, Evan and Weston, so much for your contributions for this first part. It's not often that a Mormon bishop becomes a progressive Mormon bishop, and it's not often that a progressive Mormon bishop has a child come out to him as gay while he's serving as bishop.

Weston Smith [02:37:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:51] Although it's probably going to become more and more common. But you both. And to have it all being done so recent, just in the past few years, I mean, you know, five, 10 years, but some of the stuff is just a few years old once we get to it. So we're just really grateful you're both willing to come here. And don't go anywhere yet. This is only part one of a three part series. We're coming right back with Weston's story and then we're going to come back for part three, which is where Evan goes toe to toe with two Mormon general authorities as a member of a Stake High Council, which is higher than a bishop state presidency. What did I say?

Evan Smith [02:38:27] High council.

John Dehlin [02:38:28] Yeah. As a member of a Stake presidency, how he goes toe to toe with two Mormon general authorities, which is really getting up there around LGBTQ issues. So this is a great series so far, and it's just going to get better, so thank you so much. And, Gerardo, thanks for being riding shotgun.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:49] And thanks for making this all happen.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:51] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:38:51] Yeah. You having fun?

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:53] Fun for sure. All right. All right, everyone. Thanks so much. Come right back for parts two and three. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 1667

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is August 16, 2022, and we are in an epic, amazing, multi part Mormon Stories podcast series with father son duo Evan Smith and Weston Smith. Hey, guys. Welcome back.

Evan Smith [00:00:23] Thanks, John. Thanks for having us.

John Dehlin [00:00:25] Hello. And we're here with my dear friend and colleague, Gerardo Sumano as producer of this episode and running Shotgun. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:35] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:36] Welcome back.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:36] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] How was lunch?

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:37] It was great.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] Yeah?

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:39] Gerardo likes McDoubles.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:40] For those of you,

Evan Smith [00:00:43] no pickles, no onions.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] Weston likes milkshakes. Anyway, we had a quick lunch because I'm trying to be a more humane human to my colleagues and guests. And we're right back. Ready? We just spent a good three hours with Evan and Weston Smith talking about what it was like for Evan and for Evan to become a progressive Mormon branch president and ultimately bishop within the Mormon Church. We talked about his upbringing in the Mormon Church, him marrying Cheryl. Cheryl, yeah. And. And then, and then him becoming a big time global corporate lawyer in Boston, helping with entrepreneurs and startups and that sort of thing while fighting some very serious physical conditions that included brain tumors. Should we, should we jump in and let you.

Evan Smith [00:01:44] Yeah, we'll finish. Fortunately, it wasn't actually cancer. It wasn't a brain tumor. And I, through years of going down to nih, I'm now on a drug that is perfect for me, gives me that protein that I'm genetically missing to have a break on my immune system. So I'm really lucky to have the treatment that I have and I'm doing great.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] So your brain doesn't keep growing growths that it shouldn't grow.

Evan Smith [00:02:02] It doesn't have the immune cells attacking infections that are not there anymore. That's what was happening. I had stuff that was attacking stuff that wasn't there. And now that's regulated. I'm doing great.

John Dehlin [00:02:12] Beautiful.

Gerardo Sumano [00:02:12] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:02:13] Really lucky.

Weston's Story Growing Up in the Church

John Dehlin [00:02:14] So where we left off in last episode, in part one, and if you haven't watched part one, pause now go back, watch the previous episode, listen to it, you'll be super glad you did. There's a lot of really important context there. But we talked about how Evan reached a position that few Mormons reach, which is the level of bishop or congregation leader within the Mormon Church. And not only did he start having an LGBTQ affirming awakening when a member of his branch reward came out to him as gay, but within a short amount of time after that, his own son Weston came out to him as gay when Weston was 16.

Weston Smith [00:02:55] Sixteen, is that right?

John Dehlin [00:02:57] And that's where we left off in the cliffhanger. So now we're in part two. And this is. This is a time for Weston's story. And I'm just going to go ahead and take a minute to plug Weston's book. Weston, along with his dad, is also a published author. Self published author. This is a memoir called this Body of Water. If you have family member, young person, it's probably for adults too, who wants to read a memoir about what it's like to be gay within a high demand religion or within Mormonism. That's what this book is about. It's probably for other people in or coming out of other high demand religions as well. Anything you want to say about this book before we jump into your story?

Weston Smith [00:03:44] Yeah, it's definitely a more mature book because I really wanted to convey kind of the harsh truth of what I went through, which involves a lot of suicidality and things like that. So it's really a book for anyone. I invite any church leader to read it just so they can have a better understanding. Any church leader, any parent, anyone who wants to have a better understanding of what it's like to really struggle with being gay in the church or really any type of queer in the church. I was really honest with my feelings and I'm very proud of what I've written. And so if you want to check it out, it's available at WestonSmithBooks.com for purchase.

Evan Smith [00:04:30] It's Weston with an O.

Weston Smith [00:04:31] Yes. So WestonSmithBooks.com all one word and.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] Yeah. Weston Smith Books.com.com.

Weston Smith [00:04:41] yep.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] All right. And I don't know if you guys know this, but half of our audience, half of our viewing audience now has never been lds, so we have a lot of members of other high demand religious traditions who I think are going to be able to find value in this book as well.

Evan Smith [00:04:56] Yeah, for sure.

Weston Smith [00:04:56] I think so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:57] Yeah. All right, so what we're going to do is rewind in our Back to the future DeLorean time machine. We're going to rewind like Marty McFly to Weston's experience growing up Mormon. And we'll kind of hear parallel narrative, parallel to a lot of what we heard from Evan's story. So, Weston, where does your Mormon story begin?

Weston Smith [00:05:21] Yeah, so I guess, I don't know. There's so many different parts of things that kind of intertwine for me. I guess the first thing, even though it might not seem related, I kind of want to talk about is adhd, because that's probably the first thing.

Weston Smith [00:05:37] You know, I think a lot of my story has to do with just how I felt and dealt with shame. And ADHD is probably the first thing that really caused me to feel that kind of shame. So I got diagnosed with ADHD last year. But obviously it's been something in my entire life that I've dealt with. And part of that meant that, like, it was really hard for me in school to form proper social relationships with people. And I remember being even like five or six and people just not wanting to talk to me because I didn't know how to stop talking once I started, and.

Weston Smith [00:06:13] Or I would not be paying enough attention to them during a conversation, or I would space out or, you know, any number of things and just made it so that I was not really well liked at school and really didn't have any. Like, I had a couple of friends, like, that would be off, off and on over the years. But really, throughout my entire time at school, I was kind of isolated, I would say.

Weston Smith [00:06:38] So that's an important piece of context, I think, before going into it. And so I remember kind of contrasting that with, you know, going to church

Gerardo Sumano [00:06:51] and

Weston Smith [00:06:54] especially my baptism. I remember how many people showed up, people that I had never seen before. Like, you know, my family from out of the country, from. Came all the way from Canada, some of them, some cousins I had never seen before came from, drove, like, a few, four or five hours from Connecticut to where I was baptized in Boston, in the Boston area.

Weston Smith [00:07:14] And all of these things kind of told me that, like, oh, well, if you don't want to be lonely, you need to be righteous, you need to get baptized, you need to do all these things. And that's kind of like the. The framework for my Mormonism is not so much the doctrinal belief of it, but it's the social need that I had that was fulfilled by the church. You know, looking back at it. And so pretty much everything I did in the church was to receive either some sort of validation, whether it be from peers or from my parents or from other adults, just because I had so little of that outside of the church that, like, the church became everything for, you know, validating who I was as a person.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] Yeah, I'm thinking about. That's a really interesting framing, because for me, it was about one true church and authority and the restoration and the apostasy and Joseph Smith and, you know, just essential ordinances to reach heaven. That's a very different framing than, like, I may not be loved by my Family or I may be cut out or I may be alone. If I'm not part of this, that's not my framing growing up.

Weston Smith [00:08:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] I'm guessing, Evan, it might not have been yours now.

Evan Smith [00:08:35] I had the same framing that you did.

Weston Smith [00:08:36] Yeah, yeah. And so I don't know, it wasn't necessarily that it was framed any differently. I think those messages were still given to me. But I never, I think even from a young age, I never really had like what you would call it, testimony of the church where it was like, you know, I read through the Book of Mormon. I think it's the greatest thing ever. And, you know, I'm going to go to church every Sunday because of the Book of Mormon and my testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith and all this other stuff. And so I think part of that also was that as we talked about with him, that my parents really advocated for a love first kind of mode of religion where it was, you be a good person and that's the basis of your religion.

Weston Smith [00:09:19] And so I thought, you know, I don't necessarily need to believe in the literal truth of the Book of Mormon or believe even that like Joseph Smith was a prophet. As long as I'm being a good person, I can kind of put those things on the back burner and just really focus on the social bit which was kind of the most important for me, you know, being so alone during, during school years. So. Yeah, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:44] It's kind of interesting because I feel like, like you said, John, you had a different framing. I probably had a different framing too. Similar to yours. Similar to yours. But I wonder if having a progressive family, members, progressive parents, create this kind of new narrative of being alone. And this is about family and this is about love, but at the same time feeling like you have to be obedient, never leave the church and stay inside the community to be part of, you know, your, your family. And then the focus is not so much on the truthfulness of Joseph or the Book of Mormon and apostasy and restoration. It's more on the societal aspect of it.

John Dehlin [00:10:30] Yeah. One of my early Mormon stories episodes was with a friend named Dr. Dave Christian. And he talked about validity Mormons and utility Mormons. Validity Mormons cared about whether it was true. Utility Mormons cared about whether it was useful. And I, I think what we're arriving at is a realization that if you're raised in a progressive, love based Mormon household, your testimony is rooted in the utility of a social network which is dependent on the church being strong and vital. But it's much more about the relationships and the community than it is about the veracity.

Weston Smith [00:11:10] Exactly. Especially for me. Like, I. I feel like the church kind of does prey on people who like me, who were really, you know, desperate for connection with other people. And, you know, we'll get more into that later. But as you know, I kind of start approaching my mission and the reasons why I decided to go. But yeah, so just dealing with all of these things kind of transitioning more towards middle school and high school was really difficult because I mean anyone. There's a lot of people who've had. Had difficult times and you know, middle school and high school be just because of the same things.

Weston Smith [00:11:53] Right. Like they feel alone, they maybe don't have that many friends or they don't fit in for whatever reason. But I think there was certain things that made it more difficult for me and the church kind of like compounded on the difficulties that I had where it was like I was trying really hard to perform a specific brand of masculinity that I saw in Mormonism and that I saw, you know, just in society generally, but specifically in Mormonism where, you know, I had to be the strong one. I had to be the one who fixed all the, all the like, stuff in the house when the house, you know, when stuff broke down or like I had to be the one, you know, the physical, even like the physical build of it.

Weston Smith [00:12:33] And this is also kind of, I guess more society mixing with Mormonism, but like the societal expectation that you are this big, buff, strong guy. And I looked at myself and I'm like, I'm more fragile, I'm thinner, I'm super emotional. I, you know, I like to read romance novels, like this kind of stuff. I like to write poetry. Like it just, it's. I never really fit the mold and I tried really hard to. And so like I would.

Weston Smith [00:13:03] I basically had this group of friends around me that were not really, I don't know really how much of friends they actually were because I was kind of more just like someone that they could use to validate their masculinity because it was like, oh, at least we're not as bad as Weston kind of thing.

Weston Smith [00:13:23] And I based a lot of my self worth off of what they thought about me, which was not good because they never invited me to anything. And also just. And the people who I would have gotten along with, I told myself I didn't really want to hang out with because maybe they would smoke or they would vape or they would, you know, drink. God Forbid. They would drink after a lot of them were in drama. They would drink after the productions were over. Right. And I'd be like, oh, can't hang out with them. And I had a stigma. I. Where I was. I was like, I have to stay righteous and have to, you know, make sure I'm not.

Weston Smith [00:14:02] I'm not in. I'm keeping my standards when I'm choosing my friends. So all that led to me being really, really isolated in high school.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] Yeah. Yeah. When you talk about masculinity, which is not just a Mormon concept, but I'm thinking about this idea of man of the house, and if your dad's working all the time and serving in the church, how there might be expectations for you to kind of step up. And then if you add to that kind of. The priesthood holder, even if you weren't 12 yet there I. The. The LDS family framework, the. The man leads and your mom's not a man. So I could. I. I guess I'm. Yeah, I'm. I'm kind of vibing with this idea that you probably did feel a lot of traditional patriarchy masculinity pressure that maybe didn't fit like a glove for how you felt about yourself.

Weston Smith [00:14:53] No, I was really insecure about myself and, you know, my gender presentation. Not even. I didn't even necessarily have, like, gender dysphoria. Like, I didn't want to be a woman or whatever, but I'm like, I just don't want to be a traditional man. That's not who I am. And, like, I thought that's who I should be for so long that I really tried and put up to put up this facade. And so he's being nice, but I

Evan Smith [00:15:20] think some of that came from me, too. I projected a little bit onto him of, this is how you should be.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] Was there the whole sports thing, like, get you to.

Weston Smith [00:15:28] Yeah. My mom really pushed me towards signing up for football. And it was going to be. I was going to get signed up for it until, you know, his. They knew, like, oh, dad has one to five years left to live. We think it's brain cancer. And then my mom was like, well, maybe we shouldn't be forcing our kids into doing stuff that they don't really want to do at the moment because it's already a lot of stress.

Weston Smith [00:15:54] So I don't know. That was kind of a small blessing in disguise, I guess. But, like, it's just a lot of it. It's so hard because it also. The ADHD thing kind of started coming back again. Not just in terms of social stuff, but also, you know, with adhd, you get these kind of flashes of motivation. Well, you'll do like a bunch of stuff all at once. And my parents would see that, and they would.

Weston Smith [00:16:20] And then you also have these periods of like, where you're just kind of bored out of your mind and not doing anything or you're looking for something that's like more exciting and stimulating. And so I would come home after school feeling really lonely and dejected, and I would go and play video games for 8 to 10 hours. Like I would get home at like 2 or 3pm and play till 1am and then in high, in high school, once you start with early morning seminary because, you know, it's not like in Utah where you. It's part of a class, you have to get up an hour earlier for school.

Weston Smith [00:16:52] I'd be getting out, going to bed at like 1 or 2am and waking up at 5. And that's just because, like, I didn't know how to exist without having, you know, that amount of like video games in my life. Just because it was. It was almost like a form of substance abuse for me. Just because it was so much. The games I played were very, like high octane. Very.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] Were they first person shooters or.

Weston Smith [00:17:11] No, it was League of Legends was the main one.

John Dehlin [00:17:13] Dude, my son's super into League of Legends.

Weston Smith [00:17:16] So.

John Dehlin [00:17:16] So what was your main. What were your main character? Which lane? Which lane did you do?

Weston Smith [00:17:20] Okay, so I was. I mained Lux and LeBlanc Mid, and I got to High Platinum around this time. What?

John Dehlin [00:17:29] Yeah, High Platinum is a huge deal.

Weston Smith [00:17:32] I was in like the top 2% of the player base. Top 1% of the player base.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] Lux and who else?

Weston Smith [00:17:40] LeBlanc.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] LeBlanc.

Weston Smith [00:17:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:41] Okay. Do you know the Imagine Dragons guys play League of Legends?

Weston Smith [00:17:45] I do, yeah.

Evan Smith [00:17:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:46] Do you like Arcane?

Evan Smith [00:17:47] Yeah, that's a good Netflix.

Weston Smith [00:17:49] Netflix show.

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:50] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:17:50] It's funny because I still love the game and I still play it, but I have a much healthier relationship with it now because back then it really was just like, I need something to forget all the stuff that's going on at school.

John Dehlin [00:18:01] Totally. I totally relate to that. And it's totally in, you know, the 2000 and tens and 2000 and twenties. That's how kids, that's what kids are dealing with these days.

Weston Smith [00:18:10] Yeah. And so my parents, how they deal,

John Dehlin [00:18:12] it's how they cope.

Weston Smith [00:18:13] Yeah. Yeah. And so I think my parents, looking at, you know, the symptom of that being like this kid is Playing how much on per day, they kind of wanted to clamp down on it and that kind of. Especially because, again, with the whole ADHD thing, it was like, a lot of times I would just skip homeworks and things like that because I wasn't interested in it or because I, you know, had problems kind of managing my time properly or not getting distracted or any number of things. And I just have to ask, how

John Dehlin [00:18:46] did Mid fit your personality versus Jungler or ADC or Support or Top? Like, why middle?

Weston Smith [00:18:53] Mid was kind of the way, especially the characters that I played. It was kind of a lot more tactical where it was like, than some of the other roles, I thought. I don't know. They're all tactical in their own way. But, like, it was. It was also a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:19:06] I just started impressed. My. Are you jealous that John knows about

Evan Smith [00:19:09] League of Legends and I don't know all the stuff?

Weston Smith [00:19:11] I mean, this is not what I was expecting to be talking about, to be honest.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] Can tell you a funny story, huh? So can I tell you a funny story?

Weston Smith [00:19:18] Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:19:20] So my son, you know, he's typical teen, and, you know, at some point I'm thinking we're going to be the best father son duo ever. I'm going to be the dad that I always wanted, you know, and by 14, 15, he's not having any of that.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] So I'm thinking, well, what can I do to connect with my son? And I'm like, I know I'll learn League of Legends. So I went and learned League of Legends so that I could play with my son. And at first he was super excited about it.

John Dehlin [00:19:48] And I'm not dumb, and I grew up playing video games. But no matter how hard I tried and no matter how much time I spent, and I've spent time playing League of Legends here in the Mormon Story Studios many, many hours back in the day, I was so bad that he would just get so angry playing with me because I sucked. Too bad for his standard because this game is super sophisticated.

Weston Smith [00:20:13] It's very sophisticated.

John Dehlin [00:20:14] All the different weapons, all the different characters, all the champions, all the different combinations. You know, it's. It's like you think about chess as being like the ultimate intellectual game. But. But you also. There's also the dexterity.

Weston Smith [00:20:32] The dexterity element. It's, It's. You know, I really do love the game. I love watching it. But, yeah, at that time, it was definitely not, like I said, not a healthy relationship with it.

Evan Smith [00:20:42] I watched him play a couple of times and I thought about trying to figure it out, John. And I was like, I can't do that.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] You saved yourself a of time because it did not help. It probably made my relationship with Winston worse. So anyway, sorry, I don't mean to make this about me, but.

Weston Smith [00:20:56] That's okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] I'm vibing with these guys.

Weston Smith [00:20:57] Yeah. So I.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Sorry to turn your tragic self medication into my fun.

Weston Smith [00:21:03] Oh, that's. Yeah. But yeah, so I guess kind of my parents really wanted me to, in their eyes, live up to my potential because they saw like the flashes I had where I would like do really amazing on a project or I'd write this like really bomb, like amazing essay.

Weston Smith [00:21:22] And, you know, they could see that I had the capacity to do these things but wasn't always doing them. And they thought it was just because, oh, you know, he's addicted to video games or maybe he's lazy kind of thing.

Weston Smith [00:21:34] And they told me that like repeatedly. They're like, you're not working hard enough. You need to work harder if you're going to get into byu. And, you know, that's where we met, that's where we want you to go. It's cheap school, but also it's the best place for you if you want to stay in the gospel and if you want to stay on that path and that kind of hearing that like, because it got to the point and at a certain point where I was only getting like, I was still getting mostly A's, but I. It was a good mix of A's and B's.

Weston Smith [00:22:10] And they started really grilling me about the B's. And I started really internalizing a lot of different things about like, my self worth that I, from all these different places, right? From my peers telling me it wasn't enough of a man, to my parents telling me I wasn't good enough at school to, you know, the church also telling me I wasn't good enough in, you know, a bunch of different ways at this point. You know, I had discovered masturbation probably around age 13, 14.

Weston Smith [00:22:39] And that was. I also was using that as a coping mechanism to kind of deal with that. But it would be like this, you know, classic shame spiral where you feel you do it to like, forget the problems and then it just makes things worse because you feel so much more shame from the religion.

John Dehlin [00:22:54] And did your parents talk to you at all about masturbation, sexuality?

Weston Smith [00:22:59] Okay, so I guess I should probably also back up a little bit. And so we can. Because there's all these different things that are converging, right. You can Kind of see the train wreck coming, but the last final piece is obviously the coming out part.

Weston Smith [00:23:14] And so I started crushing on this, on this boy in my deacons quorum. Not the same. Same one that we were talking about with my. My dad. And you know, it was very innocent, right? It's like, I don't. For me at least, it was like your classic first crush where it's like you don't really know what's going on.

Weston Smith [00:23:33] But for me, doubly so, because it was, you know, a gay crush. And I never thought I was going to have one of those. Obviously I didn't even know was a thing. And so, you know, we would go to scout camp. We went to scout camp together. We did all the quorum activities together, all the, all the Tuesday night mutual activities. We spent. We spent a lot of time together. And he was in our school district and I saw him in a lot of my classes and we became really close. And as the years progressed, I kind of realized that it was not just friendship, but I was also really attracted to him.

Weston Smith [00:24:10] And that's kind of when the first time I remember having feelings for him was around ages 12 or 13. And then it kind of, you know, hormones and puberty and all that went progressing and until like at age like 15, around there was when I really was like, I can't deny this anymore. And I kind of came out to myself and realized I was gay.

Weston Smith [00:24:36] So I was also dating a girl. So I kind of buried that a little bit and buried that attraction for him and started dating this girl I'd been friends with for years at that point, like, we were really good friends and she had been crushing on me the entire time and kind of wanted me to be in a relationship with her. And I kind of went along with it because I was like, oh, you know, I. This will be good for her kind of thing, like. And I, you know, I do love her and I want to make her happy. I thought that was what, you know, that was supposed to feel like.

Gerardo Sumano [00:25:11] But you had accepted that you were gay by that point.

Weston Recognizes His Sexual Orientation

Weston Smith [00:25:15] I wasn't like, I'd accepted the feelings were gay feelings. I hadn't put the label of gay on myself yet because I was like, oh, you know, there's this girl I like, quote unquote, you know. And so I started dating her once I turned 16, because, you know, you don't date before you're 16.

Weston Smith [00:25:34] Good Mormon boy. And we had this really nice date at the local fair. And I remember going back into the parking lot and, like, making out for a bit. And the funniest thing was I got into my car and drove home and my brother was there. I told my brother. I'm like, I don't get why this whole lot trasity thing is so hard for people.

Weston Smith [00:26:02] I'm like, I was like, making out with her. We were going at it and I don't know, man. It's not that great because. And his eyes got kind of wide. He's like, it wasn't. I was like, yeah, dude, like, people over hype kissing way too much. Like, like, it. It wasn't anything to write home about. And he. He was kind of confused. But we laugh about it now. I was like, well, obviously, you know. Yeah, so this love chastity thing is

John Dehlin [00:26:31] going to be easy.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:32] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:26:35] So, yeah. I guess at a certain point, though, I realized some other stuff happened within the relationship that caused it to fall apart. And I realized that I fully came out to myself and like, okay, I'm gay. And that was kind of when I started looking to come out to a couple of different people. So the first person I came out to is my brother. Wait, wait, wait.

Gerardo Sumano [00:27:04] Can we go back just a little bit? On. You mentioned a little bit of masturbation.

Weston Smith [00:27:10] Yes.

Gerardo Sumano [00:27:11] So what your parents would have taught you about it or what would you have learned about it at church? And how did you.

Weston Smith [00:27:19] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:27:20] Reconcile that with your actions or whatever and being gay?

John Dehlin [00:27:24] What had you been taught about being gay?

Weston Smith [00:27:26] Yeah. Okay, so there's. Sorry, I'm bouncing around a lot because. Just because there's like so much stuff that is. Is so interconnected to me, I don't really know how to unpack it all, but I guess talk more about masturbation. You know, we had gotten tons of lessons about pornography and law of chastity stuff, and I had an interesting relationship with it because we would. I don't know how many third hours I sat through where they would talk to us about this, but it was a lot. It was like. It felt like every couple months that they would bring someone in to tell us, like, here's why porn is bad. Here's why you need to stop masturbating. Here's why. And, you know, we would all kind of sit there with, like, our heads down because, you know, all of us were doing it, like.

Evan Smith [00:28:11] And, yeah, I regret some of the ways I taught on that topic. Talked about it like a. Like an addiction, kind of like the dopamine hits that you get from it and that sort of thing. Had a guy in the Stake present a lesson on that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:28:28] It's the whole fight the new drug.

Evan Smith [00:28:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] And logic.

Evan Smith [00:28:31] That's.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] That's not science based.

Evan Smith [00:28:32] It's not science based at all. But I did it. I taught that and my sons got that. And the reason I did is because I had virtually every single young man in the branch in the ward would. Would come and talk to me about, about it. So you know, did, did you talk to your.

Weston Smith [00:28:50] Okay, so, so, okay, this is, this is where it gets fun. I guess.

Evan Smith [00:28:58] I.

Weston Smith [00:29:00] So the major thing that I kind of took from these was that like it was going to ruin how you see your future wife. Right. Like, if you keep doing this, you're going to be so overstimulated, right. From the amount of porn use that you're doing that you're not going to be able to get turned on by your wife. Right. And this was kind of the thing that they used to scare us, being like, you need to stop doing it and you need to save it for your wife. And I was sitting there in my head, I'm like, how is me like reading gay erotica going to affect my wife in any way?

Weston Smith [00:29:30] Because I'm like, there's not an even. There's not any women here. There's like. And so it, for me it was like this big disconnect of like more thinking it was wrong because it was more like an addiction. Right. And I couldn't like, I couldn't go for, you know, a week without it. Right.

Weston Smith [00:29:50] And so I thought I was addicted and that I was like something was wrong with me psychologically or whatever in that way. And I was like, oh, this. Like I'm addicted to, you know, porn in the same way someone is addicted to like nicotine or something like that. Which I don't think that's.

Evan Smith [00:30:08] No, it's totally false. It's not a, it's not an addiction.

Weston Smith [00:30:11] Yeah, but.

John Dehlin [00:30:13] Sorry.

Weston Smith [00:30:13] Yeah, but, but as a result of that, I remember feeling again just more the shame. Right. And like I said, it's all just kind of compounding at this point where it's like a lot, like a lot of the shame, not just from

Gerardo Sumano [00:30:32] being

Weston Smith [00:30:32] gay, but also from like having to seek this out, right. This type of stuff out. And so it was just a really difficult road to kind of, you know, to walk. And it just really, it really did hinder my self esteem a lot because it would be like I couldn't ever get all the stars to align where like I was doing well in school. Like I had friends who liked me or, and like I wasn't masturbating. And so there was always some like, angle of shame that was, that I was being attacked with.

John Dehlin [00:31:13] And that's, there's, I'll, I'll generously say it's an unintentional insidiousness about some high demand religions because that's the perfect setup for either fidelity to the church, loyalty to the church, or a personal meltdown is if they can always have you feeling unworthy and inadequate.

Weston Smith [00:31:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:37] And you're always needing the church to try and purify yourself, to cleanse the impurity with the atonement, with the sacrament, with repentance, with prayer. Right.

Weston Smith [00:31:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:53] You're always on that hamster wheel of trying to hustle for worthiness, but you can never quite make it.

Weston Smith [00:31:59] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:31:59] Yeah. I wish we would have known that ADHD was a part of this whole thing too, obviously. I wish I would have known you were gay as well from an early age. Well, at the same time I was homophobic, so maybe that wouldn't have been good. But it's hard to parent when you have the wrong instruction manual, you know, church teachings or the instruction manual. And if you use that for a gay kid to parent a gay kid, it's almost tantamount to child abuse. And then you throw in the ADHD element too. And we didn't, we just didn't know how to raise Wes in the way that he deserved to be raised. So that's huge regret in my life. And I, Yeah, yeah.

Weston Smith [00:32:35] So all this is kind of converging. I don't, so I don't talk to anyone. I, I, I, I think I only talked, I didn't dare talk to like the bishop before my dad about, I don't remember exactly how the timeline lines up if, but like I remember you were the only person I ever talked to about my porn use and it was only after I came out to you. And yeah, so this is kind of the point where after I've come out to myself, I'm not really out to anyone else yet that like things really start getting bad because it was also as bad, getting worse socially at school. And can I say a quick question,

John Dehlin [00:33:21] like a question I asked your dad that I want to ask you that's kind of going back a tiny bit. What was like your Mormon family? Like, like, was there scripture study? Was there prayer? Was there family evening? Like, was it a happy home? Was there music in the home? Like, we haven't really talked about the Mormon context.

Weston Smith [00:33:40] That's A good question. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] As a setup for what comes later,

Weston Smith [00:33:45] I would say we were trying, but we were just too busy most of the time. Like, he was almost never home.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] Wait, your dad's bishop and you're not able to live?

Weston Smith [00:33:53] The Mormon bishop trying to make partner and with, like, all the health issues, like, I didn't see him for most of my.

Evan Smith [00:33:59] I was flying back and forth at NIH trying to figure out this health.

Weston Smith [00:34:02] I legitimately did not see him for sometimes like a week or two in a row. And so, like, my mom also at this time, I think, you know, we've talked a lot because of, you know, we have had to unpack all this stuff that happened during his time. And she was really struggling with depression and a lot of these things,

Evan Smith [00:34:23] which

Weston Smith [00:34:23] made it really hard for her to give me what I needed. And it also just made it hard for her to be like that perfect Mormon mother outside of sacrament meeting. Right. She could get dressed up for sacrament and go and talk with all the young women and the Relief Society and do that kind of role of the bishop's wife. But as soon as she got home, it would kind of just be like, back into the. Into the funk, I guess. And she, like, I don't have very many memories of her, like, laughing or being happy at all from. From for most of my life.

Evan Smith [00:34:59] And so, John, we would do family prayer and Scripture study by phone, FaceTime a lot because I wasn't there. So I'd call in and everybody get around the phone. Do you remember? Do you remember?

Weston Smith [00:35:10] I remember that, yeah.

Evan Smith [00:35:11] Yeah. We had family home evenings. Like, I would. On Sundays, we would justify, like, going out and playing catch and like, you know, we didn't have, like, the formal programs all the time because I got away from that. I didn't like doing that. So I tried to check all the boxes, right. As a good Mormon family. And we tried to do all the things, but we had to come up with creative ways to do it because of our schedules.

Weston Smith [00:35:31] And a lot of times it would be our New Year's resolution that, like, this year we're going to do consistent scripture study and you know how New Year's resolutions go. It's like within a couple weeks, you know, it's falling apart. But we were always trying, right? We were always trying to, like, get the ball rolling and stuff. But like I said, there was between how little time my dad had and between, like, all the mental health stuff that my mom was dealing with, it just. We weren't ever really like, the perfect Mormon Family.

John Dehlin [00:35:57] And this isn't to call you guys out. It's to highlight a really interesting, maybe toxic reality in Mormonism that some of these families that are viewed as the shining examples of, like the model Mormon family, the bishop and his family, the relief study president, her family, the stake presidency members to everyone in the ward and in the stake, you know, these are the elite families. These are the families to look up to. These are the families to model, you know, your own family after and.

John Dehlin [00:36:29] But sometimes it's almost like the shoemaker's kid. Like, you can't live the gospel the way that you would want to because you're too busy trying to. To live that corporate ideal and serving in the church and your mom's, Your wife, mom is depressed and your kids are struggling. But then.

John Dehlin [00:36:52] And maybe you guys are more progressive than many, but the image has to be kept up. Even though things aren't really working behind the scenes, it's no one's fault, but it's just the role you get thrust into. And for some toxic Mormon families like this, there's this really pernicious public versus private thing that goes on where public, it looked perfect. And then behind the scenes it's. It's a real mess, like screaming or yelling or violence or, or real dual life kind of toxic kind of stuff.

Weston Smith [00:37:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] And I don't know how much of that applies to you all, but I don't.

Weston Smith [00:37:31] I don't think it was so much toxic as it was just kind of sad. Like, my mom was just. I think she was just sad for a lot of a good portion of, like, my, My middle school and high school years. Just. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] And the weird thing is, is that they call it the Great Plan of Happiness. The Mormon Plan of salvation is called the Plan of Happiness. But once I really started digging into polygamy, I realized that so much of the Mormon Church and, And of the history of the. Let's just say the corporate Mormon empire in Utah was built on the backs of depressed women.

Gerardo Sumano [00:38:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:06] Who are nameless and faceless, but they're the ones who are bearing the brunt of making all this work.

Weston Smith [00:38:12] And, yeah, I think that that definitely applies to my mom and I. I'll never forget, you know, because I started getting the inkling that, like, some of this was not right. Right. Like, for, for me personally, I was like, okay, there's. I should not feel this sad. Right. Like, I know I'm a teenager and I'm going through stuff and there's hormones, but I think something is worse than it should be. I remember getting home from. I don't remember exactly where it was, but we pulled into the garage, told my mom, like, I don't know what it is. I think it might be depressed or something.

Weston Smith [00:38:41] And kind of without hesitation, she was like, you don't meet the clinical definition for it. Just, like, right away, I was like, oh, okay. Looking back, and I'm like, oh. She knew exactly what the clinical definition was. I think she's probably seeing a therapist at that time and knew that battle so well that I think it almost kind of blindsided her that I was also struggling with it because it wasn't presenting in the same way that it was presenting for her, which is just struggling to get out of bed kind of thing. For me, it was, you know, going more towards, like, the suicide angle of it.

John Dehlin [00:39:23] So you're both depressed.

Weston Smith [00:39:24] Yeah. And that kind of leads to us having a really. We just don't have a good relationship at that. During that. During these years. Because of. Because of that. Right.

Weston's Mental Health Crisis and Suicide Attempt

John Dehlin [00:39:34] Did you feel, Weston, like a constant disappointment to your parents?

Weston Smith [00:39:39] Yes. And.

Evan Smith [00:39:44] Sorry.

Gerardo Sumano [00:39:48] I don't know.

Weston Smith [00:39:49] I just. I just really didn't feel like there was. I don't know. I really just didn't feel like there was anything to look forward to any day, you know, that I went to school or did anything. And I started to think of myself as super lazy. I started to think of myself as a loser because I was playing so much, so many video games. And, you know, my parents kept telling me to, like, get my act together.

Weston Smith [00:40:19] And the church kept telling me, you know, kind of the same thing. At a certain point. They're like, you know, you need to focus on getting good grades so you can go to BYU and kind of throwing the gay thing on top of that. And, like, the fragile masculinity and not having any friends. It's just.

Weston Smith [00:40:37] It all kind of compounded to the point where I finally snapped. And so it was. The thing that I remember that I really. The gospel doctrine that I clung on to the most during this time. But something. I think. I don't even know if it's officially sanctioned by the church, but something that one of my Sunday school teachers said that Joseph Smith said about the bottom degree of the telestial kingdom, where if a man could see even the lowest degree of heaven, he would do anything, even giving his own life to attain that.

John Dehlin [00:41:21] And when I was taught that.

Weston Smith [00:41:23] Oh, yeah, when I heard that, I was like, well, I mean, it's better than here, right?

Evan Smith [00:41:30] That's where all the liars and murderers.

Weston Smith [00:41:32] Well, that's where all the people who commit suicide go. So, like, what. What am I doing here?

John Dehlin [00:41:35] It's still a great place.

Weston Smith [00:41:37] Yeah. And that kind of. I don't know, during this time, I got really into, like, that. That kind of thing, and I had a lot of different plans that I grew up and ways I would do it. Um, but as I started getting more intense with that, there was a kind of this moment where, like, the psychological pressure kind of caused me to break and I had, like. I don't know. The doctors call it a migraine, but honestly, I don't know if it was a panic attack or a migraine or what it was, but it was.

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:06] I call it a.

Evan Smith [00:42:07] It's a specific. It's a hemiplegic migraine, which can be brought on by stress, and it presents like a stroke. But we had no idea.

Weston Smith [00:42:15] And I don't even know if it. Like, it honestly seemed like a New Testament kind of possession to the people who are watching it, where it was like I was. I don't remember. I don't remember much of it. I just remember feeling like all the lights starting to go blurry and like someone was messing around in my head and like, I couldn't form sentences properly and started slurring my words. Then I started saying things I meant to keep secret, like, oh, I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to do, you know, these things.

Weston Smith [00:42:44] And I don't really remember anything after that, but I've been told that, you know, I was taken to the hospital and I was kind of thrashing around screaming, nonsense. I was so nervous about a Spanish assignment I had do that. I started screaming in Spanish, too. And, like, all the nurses thought that I had taken some sort of drug or something and. Or. I don't know. It really did seem like I was possessed by something.

Evan Smith [00:43:08] They tested him for drug use, and it was.

Weston Smith [00:43:11] Yeah. And.

John Dehlin [00:43:12] I don't know, 16.

Weston Smith [00:43:14] 16. So I wake up in the hospital, had to be sedated, wake up super lethargic from all the sedatives, and go home. And that's kind of where I had, like, my first. I guess you could say, like, spiritual experience. I don't. You know, looking back on it, I wouldn't apply that word to it anymore. But at the time, I definitely. I did, where I just felt so broken. I was sitting there in scrubs on. I normally had, like, the top bank, top bunk in our. Because my brother and I shared a room, and I was on the top bunk But I couldn't even make it up the.

Weston Smith [00:43:51] Up the ladder. And I just kind of plopped out on my brother's bed and started crying and crying and crying. I just. I asked God, like, I didn't do any of the, like, you know, dear Heavenly Father, you're supposed to do. I just said, God, how did it get so fucked up?

Weston Smith [00:44:10] And I just had this feeling that, like, it was going to be okay and that I needed to keep living, even though I didn't want to. And so that was kind of, like, the point for me where it was, like, definitely the worst and started improving after that because, you know, I think my parents started to realize that something wasn't right. And they started making, you know, adjustments to kind of how they were talking with me and sort of the expectations that they had set on me.

Evan Smith [00:44:44] I stopped getting after him for his grades. Well, not even just his grades, for not putting in assignments. I lightened up on the school stuff.

Weston Smith [00:44:52] Yeah. And that made a big difference. And

John Dehlin [00:44:56] was there added pressure because you were the bishop's son?

Weston Smith [00:45:00] Yeah, there was some of that. But honestly, with most of the kids in our ward, I kind of felt like, you know, we were just. We were a really solid group, and we were all pretty close, and so there wasn't a ton of judgment from any of us towards one another.

Evan Smith [00:45:16] It was a good youth. You had a group of, like, 25 active youth. They were pretty tight.

Weston Smith [00:45:20] Especially, like, I would say, like, my age group of guys. Like, we were all very close and not very judgmental towards one another.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] And Evan, is there anything else you want to share about his seizure breakdown?

Evan Smith [00:45:33] Yeah, it was just. It was terrifying. I mean, we didn't know what was going on with him. He's thrown up and he got CT scans, all these things, and nobody knew. Nobody could answer any. Anything that was happening. And I. I just. It's one of those times as a parent when you just feel completely helpless and you wonder what you've missed and what's happened and what's going on. And I. It was like the perfect storm just led to that and to a snap that caused it. And I didn't even know that the storm was brewing. So, yeah, in hindsight, so much we should have done differently.

John Dehlin [00:46:12] Just really quickly, when I think about my own kids and having a PhD in psychology and then having them experience mental illness, you know, for me, it was like, how is this possible? Margi and I, as far as we knew, we were the best possible parents. And here our kids are all coming down with Depression and anxiety. When I'm an anxiety expert, you know, I imagine there's somewhat of an equivalent thing when you're like a bishop, you're like helping counsel other parents and other kids and you feel like you've got the Lord's blessing, you're doing what you should be doing or you would have been called as bishop, and then your son's maybe not wanting to live. Did you experience those types of thoughts or feelings?

Evan Smith [00:46:55] Yeah, I mean, not initially with when the migraine happened, but afterwards when we started talking to Wes and he would tell us, well, after he came out to us and started admitting that he had been suicidal and things like that, then, yeah, a lot of those thoughts were coming, like, why, you know, why am I not having the gift of discernment with my own child? Right. I'm a bishop. I'm supposed to have that. I'm doing everything I should be doing. But I'm missing a lot of this. And I think a lot of it was because Wes was very good at keeping it quiet.

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:31] Right.

Evan Smith [00:47:32] I don't fault him for that at all. I think he was scared. He was scared to be honest with us and scared to. To talk to us. So. Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:47:43] Yeah. And I think a lot of it also, again, going back to my mom, it's like she was one who was spending the most time with me. I think depression just became so normal in our house that, like, it was. It was really hard for her to see that, like, I was doing worse than maybe I should have, than I. That I was supposed to be like. Or that I was at that point, you know, because we were all kind of in that swamp, I guess.

Evan Smith [00:48:12] And Cheryl copes with her depression, you know, a little different. Like, as much as it's hard when she has bouts of it and she doesn't really deal with it much anymore, she's figured out a lot of different ways to cope. But when she does, she's still high functioning, still does stuff. So when she saw Wes not being high functioning, she's just like, what's, you know, something else is going on.

Weston Smith [00:48:29] Yeah. And. Yeah, I don't know. At that point it was like. So even coming out of this, though, even though I stopped actively, like, making plans and, you know, I think the reason I had this breakdown is because it was probably. It was like when I was going to attempt and it was like my brain just trying to keep me alive, I guess. Like just so much stress, it just finally snapped. But after this is like, I stopped actively making plans. But I would still entertain the thoughts a lot. And I don't know, I. I engaged in like a lot of what I would call like psychological self harm where I would imagine all these different ways I would die instead of, you know, cutting or anything like that.

Weston Smith [00:49:15] Funnily enough, it was because of like the toxic masculinity that I didn't like ever really do physical self harm because I was like, oh, that's something girls do. That's something like, I don't know, you don't make any sense when you're, when you're that far, like into the. Into like that mindset.

Weston Smith [00:49:31] But I would, I would like imagine all these different ways that I would die. Like sitting in class whenever I got bored or whenever, like the lecture was kind of. Yeah, whatever. That's how I would. That's where my mind would go.

Weston Smith [00:49:45] And so even for the rest of high school, even though I wasn't like at the edge of the cliff anymore, I was still like kind of nearby, like looking into the valley constantly. So that's kind of. And that, that was the environment that I came out in. And it did make things better.

Weston Comes Out to His Family

John Dehlin [00:50:11] Because really quickly, did you say what you had been taught in the Mormon context about same sex sexuality? You already shared that?

Weston Smith [00:50:21] No.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] What messages did you pick up?

Weston Smith [00:50:24] The messages that I picked up were

John Dehlin [00:50:25] kind of mixed because an answer from the church's standpoint and then from your parents, and maybe they were the same because your dad was bishop, but talk about both.

Weston Smith [00:50:36] So I was getting really mixed messages from like the church higher ups and what they were saying versus, like what my dad was saying as bishop and as a parent.

John Dehlin [00:50:46] To me, go into as much detail as you're able.

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:49] May I say something really quick? I remember, I think the most traumatic probably parts of my story being gay and Mormon was probably the priesthood meetings. General. General Conference priesthood meetings. Because that's when the hard topics, it would be Becker or Oaks or one of them talking about either masturbation, pornography

John Dehlin [00:51:17] or homosexuality or the sanctity of marriage. And.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:20] Yeah, and I knew that one of those topics was going to be talked about on the previous session.

Weston Smith [00:51:25] The place that was the worst in that respect for me was always the temple

John Dehlin [00:51:31] baptisms.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:32] Oh yes, that too.

Weston Smith [00:51:33] Baptisms for the dead. I would go, and I remember, you know, after you finish, everyone finishes their baptisms. The officiant or, you know, whatever he's called will give you a little lesson about some of the stuff that you've done there. And I just remember him promising everyone that the work that they'd done today. Like, the work that we've done today has not gone to waste. There's lots of people who are grateful.

Weston Smith [00:52:04] And maybe you guys don't understand this yet because you don't have your own children, but, you know, family is the most important thing, and I promise you all that you're going to have your own eternal families one day. I just broke down sobbing like, no, I'm not.

Weston Smith [00:52:24] I'm not. It's not going to be me. Everyone thought I was just crying because I was overcome by the spirit or something. And it wasn't until I was on the way home that I confessed to a couple of my friends. I'm like, no.

Weston Smith [00:52:39] Because at this point, I was already out to a couple other people. I kind of came out to them and was like, look, I can't keep going to the temple. This just makes me miserable because it's just a constant reminder of what I'm not going to have, what I'm never going to be allowed to have.

Weston Smith [00:52:57] So I remember talking with my dad about, you know, kind of like how gays are supposed to be treated in the church before the policy change in 2015, and then kind of after that as well. Even before coming out to him, I had these conversations with him, And my dad was always, you know, he was always very nuanced in his position about what could change, what could happen. Like, oh, well, you know, it's not. It is something biological. It's like nature, not nurture kind of thing. And we need to be accepting and loving of these people, and these people don't get enough acceptance and love in the church, and that needs to change. And then the policy change happened, and I felt like the message was very

John Dehlin [00:53:50] clear that, like, 2015.

Weston Smith [00:53:52] Yes. The one that prohibited children of gay couples from being baptized and declared apostates. Apostates, yeah. And that, to me, was like, a very clear message. It's like, okay, this is just something that my dad is telling me, and that is unique to our wardrobe. But the actual church, right, where it's actually happening is the attitude is different.

Evan Smith [00:54:22] I was so mad when the November 2015 policy happened.

John Dehlin [00:54:26] Because you were bishop at the time.

Evan Smith [00:54:27] Yeah, I was bishop. And Wes had come out to us in September 2015. Right. So, holy moly. You had gay marriage legalized in June 2015. West came out in September 2015, and then the November 2015 policy. And I was on vacation with Cheryl in Puerto Rico, and I remember where I was standing in the hotel room when I saw on my phone that leaked you know, that the policy had been leaked, and I couldn't believe it. And I was super mad. And I thought, you know, what are they. What are they doing to my family?

Evan Smith [00:54:53] You know, Wes can't. If he. If he marries now, his kids can't be raised in the church. Like, I just thought they're treating. They're punishing children for the acts of their parents, which goes against Mormon theology. Like, you're not judged for your parents, you know, for Adam's transgression. Like, there was so much wrong with it. And they didn't trust parents to make good decisions about their kids, whether their kids could go to church if they had gay parents and not have a bad experience.

Evan Smith [00:55:23] There wasn't a trust of agency. It went against Mormon theology. I thought so much, and I was so mad. I just said, you know, what is wrong? It's going to change. I just said, this is one of those things where it's just wrong. So, yeah, I don't blame Wes for feeling like he was hearing a different message from me than he was feeling from the church, because at that point when that happened, that was very clearly I felt strongly in the other direction.

Weston Smith [00:55:43] So. And so I kind of. Between that and all of the polygamy stuff with Joseph Smith and blacks in the priesthood. I. I, like I was saying earlier, like, it didn't. There was no way you were going to convince me that the church was intellectually true at that point. I was like, you know, we could go in circles about this, but I'm not going to like, have a, like, the traditional testimony of, like, Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and did all these things and was a great man or that, like, I don't know that even, like any of the prophets were really that divinely inspired when they were doing stuff like this.

Weston Smith [00:56:23] That was clearly. I was like, if they were actually divinely inspired, they would have not done this November 2015 policy change. And so you might ask, well, then why did you stay in the church? And the answer is that I couldn't leave. It was the only thing that I like. This. This solid church friend group was the only thing I still had that was kind of keeping me back from the edge of the cliff. Right.

Weston Smith [00:56:47] And it just led to me feeling really trapped. I did feel, like, really miserable for the rest of high school and kind of, I guess, more as I was looking to go on a mission. So,

Evan Smith [00:57:04] John, I don't know if you want to go back and ask for the. I think we teased the listeners about something that came out to me, the thing that he remembers,

John Dehlin [00:57:14] because it's not a trivial thing. Even if your dad's seemingly LGBT affirming, he's still the Mormon bishop, so that can't be easy to come out to your dad when he's a bishop.

Weston Smith [00:57:23] So when I remember thinking about this, I was like, okay, there's like an 85% chance that they accept me and, like, 15% chance that they don't. But I think what a lot of people don't realize and why it's so hard to come out is, like, that 15% chance. Well, I was small in my mind. I was like, if, you know, if I. If I roll the dice and it comes up wrong, then I might be kicked out of the house.

Weston Smith [00:57:46] I don't know. I don't know what my living situation might look like after that. I don't know what the consequences are going to be. I'm already struggling with my mental health. Like, I can't. I can't take another hit.

Weston Smith [00:57:57] And so it took me coming out to my brother first and then to my aunt. It sounds kind of cynical, but I was like, at least if they disown me or whatever, then I can go to her place because I know she'll, you know, take me in, whatever.

Weston Smith [00:58:14] That was also part of why I came out to her first. And, yeah, when I did come out, it was in the car, and I was. I remember being really, really nervous, obviously. And he just, you know, he asked me the stuff. He said, he's like, oh, are you sure that you're gay? I was like, yeah, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [00:58:36] What was that?

Weston Smith [00:58:37] Like that? For me, it was. It was like. I don't know. I could tell he was kind of, from his body language that he was like, okay with it. And then he started asking. This is. I don't remember the other details. I just remember you started asking me. You're like, so, like, have you looked at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model collection? I was like, what? He's like, you look at women like that and nothing like. And then. And then he started asking me the specifics. He's like, you know, boobs, butts, like, anything. And he's just, like, bewildered. Like, this doesn't make any sense. And it's funny because it's like, my dad is.

Weston Smith [00:59:18] It's very in character for him because growing up, I would always hear these comments about my mom where it's like, your mom has the best butt out of any woman in the entire world. Or, like, she's so beautiful. Like, totally smitten with her all the time. And so I think for him, once I kind of answered, I was like, no. He's like, okay, you know, fair enough. And I don't know.

Evan Smith [00:59:40] I didn't get it. I was trying to get it.

Weston Smith [00:59:42] It was such a different and wild response from what I was expecting that, like, it made me feel a lot more at ease with things. Like, okay, this is still my dad. This is like, you know, nothing has really changed that much between us. And, I don't know, I felt grateful for that. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:59] Want Gerardo? Boobs, butts, anything? Gerardo's like, no, no. It was just so foreign to me,

Evan Smith [01:00:08] and I wanted to make sure I got exactly like what.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:12] That's why you didn't get to ask the other young man that came out.

Evan Smith [01:00:17] I could be more open with my son, but I'm glad he felt like I wasn't disappointed at everything. I was honestly just trying to understand. Yeah, I was trying to get it, but making sure.

Weston Smith [01:00:27] Yeah. And no. It was after that, I think one of the times when I masturbated after that, I went to him and was like, hey, this is a problem I've been having for a long time and haven't told anyone about. And we kind of. It was weird to talk about. But he also had set up a policy with us where it's like, you can say that this conversation happens as a bishop, and I'll treat it like a bishop. If you say you want to come to me as dad, then, you know, it'll be, like, you know, different, treated differently. So that was a conversation I definitely had. I was like, you are a bishop right now. Like, you're not allowed to tell mom about this. So. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:01:07] So you. So at the end of coming out, you felt what I felt.

Weston Smith [01:01:12] I definitely felt loved. Especially because my mom, you know, she was always. She's always been, I think, the more accepting one. And so she just. She loved me so much in that moment that it honestly surprised me because I hadn't. She'd been in such a, like, kind of depressed place for so long that I wasn't really used to getting that much affection from her. And so to have her be super affectionate and give me this hug and tell her how much. Have her tell me how much she genuinely loved me, really resonated with me and really kind of, I don't know, changed the course of our relationship. So in a good way.

Evan Smith [01:01:47] Cheryl was, I think, a lot of times approaching the kids the way she felt. I Thought she should with church stuff, I think there's a lot of instinctive things that she wanted to do that she felt like she couldn't. But in that moment, all that went out the window and she just, you know, I love you, and if you need to stop going to church, stop. I love you.

Weston Smith [01:02:06] So she was.

John Dehlin [01:02:08] Dragon comes out 100%.

Weston Smith [01:02:09] She was also crying a lot just because she. I just think she recognized how hard it was going to be for me, especially with, like, all the stuff that I was going to go through. I think she had a better idea of that than anyone else because I. I think she realized that, like, in her own journey, that getting deeper into the church wasn't going to solve the problem. And that was kind of the trajectory I was on with. With preparing for the mission. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:37] And you came out to your brother before you came out to your parents, is that right?

Weston Smith [01:02:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:41] And in. Can I say who else, or do you not want to say?

Evan Smith [01:02:44] His aunt.

Weston Smith [01:02:45] My aunt. Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:02:45] Mentioned that.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] So you came. You've. You felt safe enough with your aunt and with your brother.

Weston Smith [01:02:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:50] You were able to test that, test the waters before you came out to your parents?

Weston Smith [01:02:54] Yeah, yeah.

Evan Smith [01:02:56] His aunt had. Had left the church and was actually pretty vocal about being supportive of LGBTQ rights and stuff like that.

Weston Smith [01:03:02] So she was.

John Dehlin [01:03:03] So when you come out openly, you create a space, a safe space for some to come out to you who otherwise.

Weston Smith [01:03:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:12] Feel comfortable, right?

Weston Smith [01:03:14] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:03:16] So you gotta give a shout out to your aunt and your brother A little bit.

Weston Smith [01:03:20] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] And your mom and your dad.

Weston Smith [01:03:23] Yeah, yeah, everyone. I feel really lucky, especially, you know, knowing more queer people now that it's still a rarity to get this much support from family. And so I honestly don't know what I would have done without this response.

John Dehlin [01:03:41] Let me ask you about that really quickly. So, you know, I. I started tuning into the suicidality question in 2001 when I learned about Stuart. Stuart Mattis shooting himself on the steps of his local, you know, California Mormon chapel.

Evan Smith [01:03:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:58] And then I, you know, met Margi's cousin who had been suicidal. And. And then I moved to Utah and start paying attention to the desert news, and I start seeing the obituaries of all these young, theater loving, you know, high school kids who seem to be dying with no explanation. And.

John Dehlin [01:04:19] And. And then I start interviewing people for warmer stories. So by 2005, 6, 7, I'm pretty sure there's something that's a real problem. And then 2008 happens with Prop 8, and it just, like Triples. And so, you know, I start my PhD 2009, and I start really targeting this issue, studying it for my dissertation. Teaming with Bill Bradshaw to do a deeper study on the LGBT Mormon experience.

John Dehlin [01:04:49] And of course, by 2013, 14, 15, a huge issue is being made in our culture about suicidality that triple the suicide rates of other states in the United States. You know, I work with Tyler Glenn and Dan Reynolds to do the movie Believer. And the whole emphasis and all that is just to build awareness to the problem of Mormon youth, teen suicidality, and sometimes homelessness when the kids get kicked out. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:05:20] Fast forward to now. And even back then, the church would wheel out its apologists and say, no, no, it's not Mormonism that's causing the suicidality. It's the altitude. You know, and apparently there is a study tying altitude to suicidality at some level, you know, in the Rocky Mountain region. But also they would say it's, you know, it's other things we don't know. We don't have the data. You're jumping ahead. And even now, just recently, the church has come out with this study where they've said, like, they found that, like, lgbt, non Mormon. LGBT youth in Utah have higher depression rates or even suicide rates than LGBTQ youth in Utah.

John Dehlin [01:06:11] And they're using that as a way to tell people, see our. Our queer youth within Utah Mormonism fare better than secular queer youth in Utah. The church is good with the gays. You know what I mean? And you're smiling. Why are you smiling?

Evan Smith [01:06:27] Because I talk about. I talk about. I cite a bunch of studies in my book. My book is really cool, just like a resource manual of a lot of that stuff. And I, you know, on the. On the altitude thing, there's a study that just recently done. I forget. I think it's James McGraw from bowling. Bowling, yeah. Where the LGB. Non. The LGBTQ Mormons outside of Utah, so not in the altitude areas, fare worse from a mental health perspective than the non. Lgbtq. Non Mormon. LGBTQ people in those places. So there's.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:03] And he's the same one that did this study that John was talking about. I don't know if. You know.

Evan Smith [01:07:08] Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:09] But he's a progressive Mormon.

Evan Smith [01:07:11] Yes.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:11] Yeah. And the church has used his. He was really careful when he released this study. And I'm sorry, we're going into detail on this, but yeah, so when he released the study and he said pretty much, we. We didn't think we were going to come up with these Results. He said people should not jump ahead and make assumptions as to why Mormons, LGBTs in Utah are doing better than non Mormon. LGBT could be because of different reasons. But he published the results. I didn't know he did another study outside of Utah. Yeah, but the church used his study from Utah to promote. To say what you're saying, John. See, like, Mormonism is helping LGBT kids in Utah.

Evan Smith [01:07:54] But from what I understand, too, from that study, that shows that Mormonism is helping lgbt. It actually doesn't, because the. The people that are entering, the LGBTQ members that they're interviewing, are the ones who have stayed in Mormonism. Right. So if you're going to ask the ones who are. It's like the survivor, the survivorship bias, right? You're asking the ones who. Who were able to tolerate it, who actually has stayed. Yeah, they're doing pretty well. Well, guess what? That's because they're the minority that's been able to tolerate it. If you're gonna ask them, it's gonna be skewed, and you're gonna see you're ignoring the vast majority for whom the trauma, the teachings cause trauma.

Evan Smith [01:08:28] I mean, Brian Simmons study from the University of Georgia in 2017 was pretty clear about that. It was like 89.3% of LGBTQ Mormons in that study, and that included, you know, a lot of people that had Temple recommends, others that were inactive. It was the broad swath. They had trauma from church teachings on marriage, gender, sexuality, that sort of thing. So I think. I think James McGraw does great job, but I think his findings are twisted, I think, by a lot of apologists and others.

Gerardo Sumano [01:08:57] Yeah, for sure.

Weston Smith [01:08:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:00] Sorry for the tangent. No, that's important. And we'll make sure to include a link to your book in the show notes, because I'm glad you've assembled that research. What I like to do every time I do this interview, because you get. You get these apologists that just want to say, stop picking on the church. Stop blaming the church for suicidality. It's too complex. We don't know enough. It's. It's. You're.

Gerardo Sumano [01:09:25] You.

John Dehlin [01:09:26] You're basically weaponizing our LGBT youth for your own agenda is kind of what. The attack is coming at me when I talk about LGBTQ suicidality. So, Wes and I wanted to give you a chance to say you were an LGBT, gay Mormon youth and you were suicidal. And I know it happened twice, but let's just talk about the first time. If someone were to say to you, weston, you are faring better than your non LDS counterparts or Weston, it was the altitude. Even though you were at sea level. You know, what would you say in all seriousness and a hard felt way to Mormon apologists that want to say the suicidality has nothing to do with being Mormon and lgbt.

Weston Smith [01:10:09] Well, I have had people say this to me, had former mission companions come and tell me that, you know, I didn't try hard enough to live on the covenant path and that's why I was suicidal. If I had been more faithful, then I would have actually seen the benefits of, you know, gospel happiness.

Weston Smith [01:10:28] And it made me angry enough that I wrote a book. So this whole book is really like, it's. I wanted it to be a testament that the church has blood on its hands. And it took me a long time to even like process this enough to where I could, I could really formulate my anger towards the church in a specific way. But I can't, I can't think of any other way to say it other than like, if there was an institution that tried to take away your life, has taken away the lives of many people in your community and has not apologized for it, but rather has increased the amount of. They've ordered more muskets to be fired at you and your community than

John Dehlin [01:11:20] how

Weston Smith [01:11:20] am I supposed to forgive? How am I supposed to move on? There's no accountability yet no one from the church is acknowledging that like when apologists say this kind of thing, it flies in the face of hundreds of thousands of personal experiences and is just insulting on a level that I don't think they fully understand.

John Dehlin [01:11:46] If you had to distill it for you, what was it about your Mormon beliefs, your Mormon experience that made you feel suicidal? If you had to distill it in a minute or two, take, take your time, but like distill it for us.

Weston Smith [01:12:03] It was this conundrum of knowing especially, and we'll get into this more when I get on the mission because this is where it's really exacerbated of knowing that I am profoundly unhappy and that the church's doctrine is causing profound unhappiness because of the cognitive dissonance it's creating. And simultaneously the church having enough control over me to prevent me from leaving and actually bettering my mental health. And so it's. And in a way that like a lot of other religions aren't, like the Mormonism keeps you from leaving. And that for that, for me is I think, what drives a lot of people to commit suicide instead of just leaving the church and finding something else because you're told that it's. You don't have anywhere else to go. This is the one true church, and where were you?

John Dehlin [01:13:01] I mean, they literally say, where will you go? Yeah, right.

Weston Smith [01:13:04] Yeah. And, and so, and again, the teachings about the telestial kingdom and that kind of thing, and also that it's, it's better in the life to come or that you're, you're cured of this in the life to come. All of that kind of weighed on my mind when I was, when I was there. But also just the fact that, like,

John Dehlin [01:13:28] does that make you want to accelerate you getting to the next life? Oh, yeah, because this life's gonna suck, but the next life's great.

Weston Smith [01:13:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:35] So let's get there quicker.

Weston Smith [01:13:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:36] I don't mean to put words in your mouth.

Weston Smith [01:13:37] No, no, absolutely. And

Evan Smith [01:13:42] some people say the church doesn't teach that, but there's clear quotes from a lot of brethren and in a pamphlet that this is a mortality only thing.

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:50] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:13:51] I mean, Mormonism has a, has a very high value on martyrdom too. Where I felt like if I were to take my own.

John Dehlin [01:14:01] Jesus was a martyr and Joseph was a martyr.

Weston Smith [01:14:03] Jesus was a martyr, Joseph was a martyr. Like there are scriptures, we have hymns, you know, praising both of those things. And so I felt like if I die, I'm going to be doing a service to God somehow. Right. Even if, even if you could talk me off of that and logically explain to me that's the feeling that you leave queer people with when, when you, when you do this. And it's just insulting. It's really. I don't think I've ever been as insulted as I was by that one mission companion who insinuated that, that if I had just been a little bit more faithful that I would have, I would have found a way to make it work.

Evan Smith [01:14:47] It's like saying, you know, you're taking poison and someone says, well, if you could just take in more poison, you would have been better. It doesn't make any sense.

Weston Smith [01:14:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:56] And that's one angle. You could have done more. But the other angle is stop blaming the church. It's not the church.

Weston Smith [01:15:03] I mean, maybe you could argue that in high school for me, but when I'm on the mission. Absolutely not. It was 100% the church's responsibility.

John Dehlin [01:15:14] I wouldn't give, I wouldn't let high school, Mormon high school off.

Weston Smith [01:15:19] I wouldn't either. But if I'm being like a really hardcore apologist, you know, when I was on the mission, the church had 100% control over my thoughts and actions, practically. Right. Because that's what the mission is designed to do. It's designed to make you into a servant of Christ who is doing. And being a mouthpiece for the church and fulfilling that role again, kind of jumping a gun again before I get to the mission experience, but fulfilling that role was. I was really close to coming home in a box, and I was encouraged to stay, even though I knew that that was going to be the case. And I had to actively fight and advocate for myself. And if I didn't have the courage to do that, or if I didn't have my parents, if I didn't have my mom telling me every. Every week just to come home,

Evan Smith [01:16:14] if

Weston Smith [01:16:15] I didn't have a family that I felt like was supporting me or, you know, that network, I don't know what I would have done. Actually, I do. And it's not pretty. So I.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] So the church makes you feel trapped?

Weston Smith [01:16:35] It made me feel trapped. And honestly, if it weren't for my parents and having that out where I knew they would support me regardless, then I would have stayed trapped. Because it takes people who are vulnerable, like queer youth, who are more likely to be marginalized. Like, I was right, you know, for not either conforming to gender expectations or to be bullied for their sexuality or, you know, what have you. And it forces them into the social network that I was forced into where everything is done through the church. All of your validation comes through the church. Right. You have to be righteous because that your righteousness is the only medication that they give you to treat the.

Weston Smith [01:17:15] To treat the loneliness, to treat the, you know, all the other stuff that they're. They're. That you're feeling naturally from being a queer person. Right. And so it's just it, you know, like I said, this is why I wrote a book about it, because getting these emotions out in the way I want them to, you know, over a conversation, is hard for me to adequately say everything I want to say. But I think my experience speaks for itself in terms of that. And I think the experience of thousands of other queer youth who, you know, it also speaks like you can't have the entire. Every single queer person coming out of Mormonism saying that it was Mormonism and.

Weston Smith [01:18:03] And then argue that it's not Mormonism. It's like we're telling you what the problem is. So just listen. Instead of telling us that something's wrong with us instead.

John Dehlin [01:18:15] So to distill, it's a combination of being told you're broken and Bad feeling awful within it, being told that you can't leave it, that this is the one true good place, so you're stuck in it, and then you're only out is to die. Are those the main components?

Weston Smith [01:18:41] Yeah. I think a major problem with Mormonism, and just in this is in general, not. I mean, obviously it would help queer youth, but I think it helps a lot of people who are struggling is that they need to let go of this idea that Mormonism cannot. Has a monopoly on truth, because if you don't have anywhere else to go, it just. It leaves you feeling so trapped. And I know, and I know that because of the doctrine that that's very unlikely to change, but that has to be the thing for me that contributed the most to my mental state.

Evan Smith [01:19:14] Even if it's not a monopoly on truth, that it's the place where all truth is found. I think the church acknowledges there's truth in a bunch of areas. But to be able to say, to have that elitist attitude and say, yeah, yeah, truth is everywhere, but we have it all. We have everything that leaves people with not much hope for anything else being

John Dehlin [01:19:30] better outside, whether it's called the one true church, one and only true church. Exclusive authority, right, The. The fullness of the gospel.

Gerardo Sumano [01:19:38] Right.

John Dehlin [01:19:39] You know, it's there. The good ship Zion, you know, stay in the boat. All that rhetoric and the rhetoric of superiority, it makes you feel like, where can you go? You can't go anywhere.

Evan Smith [01:19:54] It takes a lot of courage to take. To jump out of the boat after hearing all that. Takes a lot of courage to go take a step elsewhere.

John Dehlin [01:20:01] And something. Something Weston, that I've heard in a lot of LGBT Mormon accounts that I haven't heard in years, is that you try to pray it away. You. You try to be super righteous. You try to. To have the atonement fix you, and then when it doesn't, then you think, I'm so bad that even God and Jesus can't fix me. That's an element that I'm not hearing.

Weston Smith [01:20:25] I would have tried doing that if it weren't for my dad, you know, really hammering it home, that this was a, you know, hammering home the science of it, which is that, you know, this is how I was born, this is who I am. And his acceptance of that when I came out really prevented me from ever going down that route and made me realize that that's. That thinking that way is delusional. And it didn't have a place for me.

John Dehlin [01:20:51] So that would have been a harmful addition to You.

Weston Smith [01:20:54] Oh, it would have. It would have. Absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:56] Yeah, yeah. So, so many in 2022, so many LGBT affirming quote. Mormons think that by, like, no longer supporting conversion therapy with therapists that they've solved a big problem. And now, and this, you know, even Ty Mansfield does this. It's like, well, I'm not for conversion therapy. I'm for trusting in the atonement. And I'm like, I don't. I think that's worse.

Evan Smith [01:21:22] Same.

John Dehlin [01:21:22] Yeah, I think that's worse to tell people to have faith in Jesus if you're gay.

Weston Smith [01:21:26] Yeah, I want to get. I want to get to the. To the mission.

John Dehlin [01:21:29] Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Okay.

Weston Smith [01:21:30] Yeah, so let's go. Let's.

John Dehlin [01:21:32] Let's back up.

Weston Smith [01:21:33] Backtrack a bit.

John Dehlin [01:21:33] Yeah, you came out to your dad. I just wanted to give you a chance to say that here and we can say it again. And we can say it.

Weston Smith [01:21:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:41] But I wanted to take a moment to let you articulate.

Weston Smith [01:21:43] I will just say, like, if you want the full. I would also say to any apologist, if you want the full story of how exactly how I feel about that, you know, read the book. Because I really, you know, I might. I might have said a couple of things that are not 100% logically sound here and the heat of the moment, but I've really put thought and effort into, you know, making sure those words come across correctly on the page.

John Dehlin [01:22:06] So sorry. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, we're going to put that on TikTok.

Weston Smith [01:22:10] Okay. And so, yeah, I come out to my dad and come out to my mom, and then I'm starting to get to the point where I'm graduating high school and there's a couple of options for me. So when I was applying to schools.

Weston Smith [01:22:34] Don't apply to schools. When you don't think you're going to live to go to college, it doesn't work out very well because I only applied to the BYU's and I got in to BYU and BYUI and here, Hawaii. But I was really like. So I basically had to choose between going to BYU or going on the mission right out of high school.

Weston Smith [01:22:58] And I. There was still. Even though, like, my relationship with my parents was getting better and there was still, you know, they're easing back on all the pressure. I still felt like I had been really lazy throughout all of high school and I wasn't living up to my potential and that I wasn't a hard worker and, you know, that I Needed to learn how to do that before I went to college. And I thought, okay, well, I've been told my entire life that the mission is the hardest you're ever gonna work. So if I go on the mission, then no one's ever gonna be able to tell me again that I'm not a hard worker or that I'm not trying my best or anything like that.

Weston Smith [01:23:37] And so it was kind of for that reason that I went. In addition to kind of, you know, my dad's gone on a mission, my uncles have gone on a mission, Grandpa. And then, yeah, kind of Grandpa was. Was.

Evan Smith [01:23:50] He went on a mission, too?

Weston Smith [01:23:52] Yeah, went on a mission. But so my grandpa, at this time, his dad was dealing with brain cancer and only had. It was clear that he was declining really fast. And he. His whole thing had always been missionary work. He served as a mission president in Tennessee, served his own mission in Australia.

Evan Smith [01:24:18] And so he served in the same. He was in Tennessee as mission president in the same area where my mission president was from. Tennessee.

Weston Smith [01:24:25] Yeah. And so I was the oldest grandson, and so none of his other grandchildren had left on a mission yet. And I knew it would mean a lot to him as a kind of farewell to give him my mission call. And so I put my papers in right out of high school, and I gave him the call and told him where I was going. And he was really excited and cried over the phone.

Evan Smith [01:24:52] And at this point, he couldn't really remember much function very well, but he remembered Weston's name.

Weston Smith [01:24:58] He remembered my name that one time. He didn't remember when I visited him in the hospital, but he remembered when I called him to give him the mission call, which is interesting. But he told me how proud of me he was. And that's, like, one of the last things I think I ever heard from him.

Evan Smith [01:25:13] He died a month after Wes got his mission call. He died a month later.

Weston Smith [01:25:18] So I went to his funeral, and then I was kind of off to the field.

Weston Serves a Mission While Gay

John Dehlin [01:25:23] I'm kind of blown away that not only are you gay, but you've come out to your dad, who's your bishop, you've come out to your family, and on some level, you don't totally believe the church is true, and yet you're like, so I'm going to serve a mission. You know what I mean?

Weston Smith [01:25:40] I was so desperate to just feel some sort of validation from, like. Because I. Like, the biggest thing I still had in my mind was that I was a loser, right. Because I didn't have any friends. I didn't have I spent all my time playing video games, and so I really just wanted to dispel that. And I knew, you know, going on a mission would. Would do that.

Evan Smith [01:26:02] And part of the thing.

John Dehlin [01:26:05] Redeem yourself.

Evan Smith [01:26:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the part of the desire to kind of please my. My dad. You know, his grandpa comes from the place that. My dad was a good man. He just. He had a good, kind heart. Like when I. One of the things I forgot to mention before, but when I was told that I probably had brain cancer and I called my dad and I told him, he said, I wish I could trade places with you, that was like his instant response. And that comes from a guy who, you know, 30 years prior had just survived cancer himself. He was a good man, and I think he let his grandkids know that he loved him.

Evan Smith [01:26:41] He was very orthodox believing, but had that kindness and love. And I think to seek validation from a guy like that who was like, what Mormonism can produce in its best form, I think made sense for Wes to try to get some validation from him.

Weston Smith [01:27:00] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:03] But what in the. In the research biz that's called internalized homophobia. It's basically self hatred.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:10] Doing something like serving a mission to sell the doctrine of a church that kind of hates you.

Weston Smith [01:27:17] Yeah, it's a.

John Dehlin [01:27:18] It's a deep kind of twisted form of internalized. Oh, it was negativity or homo. I don't mean to get all technical.

Weston Smith [01:27:25] No, it was definitely like. It was definitely like some self flagellation a little bit where it's like, oh, you know, I haven't really done anything worthwhile in. In high school. So, you know, I'm going to torture myself a little bit with this because I deserve it kind of thing.

Evan Smith [01:27:43] He told me when I asked him. So his mom begged him not to go on a mission because she knew it would be hard for him. Right.

Weston Smith [01:27:47] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:27:48] I didn't take that approach. I was like, hey, Wes, you don't need to go. If you want to go, fine, but you don't. You don't need to go. And I remember you told me one night that the church was good for 95% of people in the world and it helped him be better people. And so he wants to go and help that 95%, even though he's in the 5% that the church is bad for. I was like, I was blown away by his generosity and his kind of approach to just wanting to help other people that way. I don't know if that was a sincere statement at the Time or.

Weston Smith [01:28:16] It was. It was. It was all there was. There was a lot of that, too, where it's like, I'm going to go and I'm going to help people. And so I guess this kind of leads naturally into the interview with the sick president where he, you know, they have to ask you, like, why are you going on a mission? And I told him that. Right. Where I'm like, I'm going to help people. I want to. I really did. I really, you know, I wanted to be Christ. Like, I wanted to help people and understand their. Their struggles and all these things. And.

Weston Smith [01:28:49] And I told him this, and he kind of looked at me funny because almost like it wasn't the answer I was supposed to give. He's like. I think he wanted me to say, like, oh, I'm going to go and I'm going to baptize people and bear my testimony of Joseph Smith and all this stuff and the Book of Mormon and blah, blah, blah. So I think it kind of caught him off guard a little bit.

Weston Smith [01:29:12] And. But I remember. So the beginning of my mission journal was really telling, actually, when I. When I get to the. So I got called to Curitiba, Brazil, and I was really excited about that because I really love learning languages and thought it would be a good opportunity to kind of experience foreign culture and all those. All that kind of thing.

Weston Smith [01:29:40] And so I went to the. To the missionary training center in Sao Paulo. And my. The mission entries. The journal entries I have from that time.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:51] I think you mentioned on your outline, Evan, that the. His call that your calling took a little bit and.

John Dehlin [01:29:58] Oh, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:59] Did you tell your stake president you were gay? How did he react?

Weston Smith [01:30:02] Yes. Okay, so I totally. I can't believe I skipped over this part. Yeah. During that same interview where he was kind of, you know, looking at me funny and whatever. Got towards the end of the interview, and he, you know, we get to the chastity question and I answer,

John Dehlin [01:30:21] you

Weston Smith [01:30:21] know, talk about, like, you know, my past porn use and whatever and how I've, you know, successfully been, you know, able to stop masturbating or whatever when it really was still something I was doing just because I really felt like I needed to go on the mission. And I was okay with, like, you know, bending the truth a little bit in my eyes to do that.

John Dehlin [01:30:43] Like, every Mormon young.

Weston Smith [01:30:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:45] Almost everywhere.

Weston Smith [01:30:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:49] Except Gerardo.

Weston Smith [01:30:53] But then I also said, you know, not 100% of the porn is straight. And he was kind of, like, taken aback by that. He's like, okay, well, which is a

Evan Smith [01:31:11] true statement, because none of it was right.

Weston Smith [01:31:12] So. Yeah, well. Well, then I lied immediately after. When he asked me, he's like, well, what percentage? I'm like, well, it's about 60, 40. For straight stuff, I'm 60. I'm like, I'm bisexual. I'm 60% into girls and 40% into guys.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:27] But you knew you were gay.

Weston Smith [01:31:28] Oh, I knew I was gay.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:29] So why.

Weston Smith [01:31:29] It was a white.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:30] So were you lying to increase your chances of.

Weston Smith [01:31:32] That's how I thought it. I thought of it. If he sees me as mostly straight, then maybe he won't see me as gay, and maybe, like, I can still go on a mission and maybe it won't be as much of a problem. So it was like, this constant battle of, like, recognizing and trying to be as open as I could, but also trying to keep myself safe and trying to do the things that I wanted to do. So. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:04] So did he respond with anything? He said he. I'm glad you stopped something.

Weston Smith [01:32:10] He told me that he would give the same advice to any elder, but that if there was anything that was causing me to, you know, be more sexually active. If I had a. You know, like, if, for example, if you had a girlfriend or if you had a, you know, some guy that you were interested in that was causing you to have more of these thoughts, then you need to try and cut that influence from your life. Because the adversary works his hardest. In the months leading up to the mission to try and get missionaries to defect from the Lord's cause.

Weston Smith [01:32:47] That message was pretty clear to me. I actually did have a guy I was really interested in that I'd been messaging back and forth and I'd met up with a couple of times. And after that, I. I just ghosted him full stop.

Weston Smith [01:33:01] And that was really hard for me, too. And so all of this kind of came together. But I did get my mission call, and I arrived in the ctm.

Evan Smith [01:33:13] Took him eight weeks to get his mission call, which is a really long time.

John Dehlin [01:33:16] How long?

Evan Smith [01:33:17] Eight weeks.

John Dehlin [01:33:18] What would it normally be, like four max?

Evan Smith [01:33:21] So I actually called the state president.

John Dehlin [01:33:22] I was like, we know what the delay is here.

Evan Smith [01:33:23] And he assured me that it wasn't, you know, he was being treated. I wasn't the bishop at the time. I'd been released almost a year before. But I was the same stake president that I had served with, so I had a pretty good relationship with him. And he assured me that he wasn't getting treated differently because he was gay. But I. I don't know.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:42] You have your doubts?

Weston Smith [01:33:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the ctm, I don't know, people have this. This image, especially in the church, of the missionaries as like, these very righteous, like, you're the closest people to Christ kind of thing. The CTM, especially once they lowered the age to like 18, it just. It was. I basically tell people it's like, it's like a frat, but you study the scriptures all day and there's no.

John Dehlin [01:34:12] CTM stands for mtc.

Evan Smith [01:34:15] MTC in Portuguese.

Weston Smith [01:34:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:20] For those who don't know.

Weston Smith [01:34:21] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:34:22] Missionary Training Center.

Weston Smith [01:34:24] And yeah, I don't know. I had a really hard time in the. In the ctm. And my journal entries are looking back at them. I'm like, oh, my God, this is one of my first entries is, you know, I've been miserable for the past four years of high school. What's two more? I'm like, that's so melodramatic. But it's also honestly how I was feeling at the time. Like, it was. It was really just like, I'm going to keep suffering. And like, I know it's. I know I want to keep being alive mostly because I don't want to let anyone feel sad that I'm gone. But I didn't really have any reason to keep going, per se.

Weston Smith [01:35:06] And so that's kind of how I went throughout the entire mission. And, yeah, I don't know, the CTM was really hard for a lot of people just because of the strict routine and not being able to. You have even less agency than you do on the mission.

Weston Smith [01:35:22] It's, like, very regimented. And it's where they really first try to break your spirit a little bit. Because I went in there, I was like, I'm going to be a missionary who helps people. I basically viewed it as more of like, a service mission than like an actual mission mission of, like, converting people. I'm like, I'm just going to be positive force in people's lives. I'm going to try and do what Christ would do.

Weston Smith [01:35:41] And I don't even. I don't think that necessarily means baptizing people. But in Brazil especially, it's like, you baptize, you, you baptize, you baptize, you baptize. And so I butt heads a lot with my trainer or like the.

Weston Smith [01:35:57] The professor in the sea, in the CTM teacher. Yeah. And, yeah, I don't know, I managed to make it through and got to the field where I met my mission president, my mission president. I feel really lucky that I got mission president. That I got. So when I. He's just, he was a really high up in church education system. He's a CES guy and.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:31] From Brazil.

Weston Smith [01:36:32] No, from. From here in Utah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:35] Okay.

Weston Smith [01:36:36] So he was. He's honestly one of the most gentle people I've ever, I've ever met in terms of everything. And his love for, for just everyone is very apparent from the moment that you meet him. And so I felt really comfortable with him. And I went into the first interview because I had promised myself I was going to do this, because I was like, I need. If anyone needs to know this, my mission president does. And I went into the first interview with him, you know, fresh off the plane and told him, you know, I'm gay.

Weston Smith [01:37:04] You know, this is probably going to be something I'm going to. I'm going to. This will be a recurring theme of my problem, like of my, you know, faith struggles on the mission. So I'm just telling you now so you can kind of know where I'm at. And he appreciated that I told him and he told me. He's like, you know, probably best not to tell other missionaries just because you don't know how they're going to react kind of thing. And I.

John Dehlin [01:37:29] What does that feel like?

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:30] What year was that?

Weston Smith [01:37:31] Yeah, this was. So I left my mission in 2017, and this was 2017 to 2019 was when I served.

Evan Smith [01:37:39] Was he saying that as out of a place you didn't feel like he was saying you should be ashamed of being gay. He was more saying, I want to protect you from the homophobia of maybe other missionaries.

Weston Smith [01:37:46] Yes. Yeah. I didn't think it was. It was like, yeah. And then he also said, of course.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:53] But then why is he not training his missionaries to not be homophobic?

Weston Smith [01:37:57] Homophobic, right. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:58] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:38:00] Because that's a topic you don't really talk about. I mean, I can't imagine a missionary, a mission president, having that as a regular course of instruction for missionaries as to how to avoid homophobia. It's just not something mission presidents, it's not on the, not on the curriculum.

Weston Smith [01:38:13] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:13] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:38:14] Yeah. So after I. He also said, you know, he's like, I'm gonna call your parents. Cause I think he did feel like a little bit out of his depth, like he hadn't really encountered it before. And he's like, I'm call your parents and have a chat with them.

Evan Smith [01:38:31] At this point, I was serving the stake presidency. At this point, I've been called as first counselor in our state presidency. So Mr. President calling a first Counselor in state presidency to talk about gay sons serving mission and good conversation with him. He's, he's a good guy. He was very kind hearted neighbor to my, my sister lived in the same neighborhood as my sister when he before his mission. So we had connections with him. He was a good guy.

Weston Smith [01:38:51] Yeah. And he did like. The reason I also kind of got along well with him was because that was compared to all of the other mission presidents in Brazil. He was a lot more of the like love focused and we were going to show people the light of Christ kind of thing versus Baptize, Baptize, baptize. I think part of that is because he was sent in to do damage control for the church because the last mission president had gone a little too hard on the baptized to the point that where if you met a certain number of baptisms there was a mission. It was like something like a mission fun day where you would gather the entire mission together and watch Pixar movies and there would be like an ice cream truck and pizza and like this massive like a kiddie pool and like all the, all this like pull out all the stops and so it was like purely anyways he.

Weston Smith [01:39:45] The church I think need to send in someone who was like very, who they knew that they could trust. And he was very loving and you know, very focused on the gospel teachings and you know, personal conversion which I appreciated. And so the first area that I was waste.

Gerardo Sumano [01:40:06] Everyone has that story that everyone that has gone through two mission precedents is usually one that's one way and then

John Dehlin [01:40:14] the next one strict high baptizing, kind of mean mission president, bunch of messes. Low baptism quality, low retention. And then there's the cleanup. More loving, focused kind of follow up missionary. I guarantee the brethren are aware of this pattern and they, they've been doing it consciously because I've, I've been hearing this since the 90s.

Gerardo Sumano [01:40:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:41] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:40:42] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:40:42] And it's how my mission was.

Weston Smith [01:40:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:45] Yeah. And that's what. So your ears was the cleanup love guy.

Weston Smith [01:40:51] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:40:51] Yeah. After a disaster of high baptizing, low retention. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:40:56] Then numbers go down and they gotta get another military guy to go.

John Dehlin [01:41:00] Yep.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:00] Increase the baptism.

John Dehlin [01:41:01] Gotta bring focus back to the mission. It's gotten lazy. And let's.

Weston Smith [01:41:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:06] Let's be obedient. Let's baptize elder, you know.

Weston Smith [01:41:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:09] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:41:11] And yeah. So my first area I actually got my trainer was the AP of the mission. So one AP trained me and then the other AP trained another one of the missionaries who arrived with me and it was the four of us in kind of the area next to the mission office. And I think the president saw enough of me there that he's like, oh, you would make a good secretary. So I spent one transfer in that area with the ap. Then I went to another area on the very, very edge of the mission for three months that was really violent and really just a really dark city with, like, a lot of drug trafficking and violence. And so, you know, you know, stuff like heads floating in the river, things like that.

John Dehlin [01:42:06] Wow, Brazil's intense.

Evan Smith [01:42:08] It can be.

John Dehlin [01:42:09] You're not exaggerating.

Weston Smith [01:42:09] It can be. It's like, it really depends on the area. Like, my first area next to the mission office, it's like, there's pet stores all over the place. There's like, these really nice supermarkets with, like, supplements and things like that. Like a very, like, upscale area. And then, you know, got contrasted immediately after with that other area. And so. But after that. So I have. I'm four months into the mission, I get called to the mission office as financial secretary, and that's where I would spend the next eight months. And that taught me a lot about, like, how the church views money and finances and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:42:49] I don't want to make assumptions, but, like, if I'm a Mormon mission president and I'm not super well educated about this stuff, one thing I'd be worried about was that you would have feelings for your companions. Like, how would that not happen? And so. But. And that may or may not be true, but the other thing I would say is keeping in the office is a way to keep an eye on you. If I'm. If I'm a mission president, I think.

Weston Smith [01:43:15] I don't think that's really what it was. I think what it was is my AP companion, because I told him about some. Like, we were just chatting sometimes, and he figured out that I knew my way around a computer really well, and he knew that, like, that would be really useful in the office. And he also saw how good my Portuguese was, because the way it kind of pushed down all the dissonance was just to really immerse myself in the language. So even though I'd only been out on the mission for, like, four months, I was able to talk pretty fluently with people. And then by the time I was out of the mission office, I could convince people with just the accent that I was native.

Weston Smith [01:43:55] But okay. And so, yeah, it was. The mission office was interesting because the first companion that I had there, I actually. So he was really, really bad he was from Colombia. He had a lot of, you know, like, the Hispanic, like, machismo kind of going on and really did not like how feminine I was. And he. So as missionaries, you leave a message with the families after you eat lunch with them, at least. You know, in our mission, that's what we did. And we would eat lunch with a different family every day, and we would leave messages, you know, like a gospel message. And he started consistently picking messages about the family being like, oh, eternal family is one of God's core principles.

Weston Smith [01:44:47] And, you know, marriage is between a man and a woman. And, you know, stuff like this where the families kind of agreed, you know, and seemed fine. But I could tell he was targeting me specific, specifically. Even though I hadn't come out to him or do anything or said anything to him, he kind of knew I started targeting me and he would always do, like, attack me personally in front of the members. And so he knew I couldn't respond angrily at him. Because you don't upset the members, right? That's the number one rule of the missionary, as a missionary is you don't ruin the relationships with the members.

Weston Smith [01:45:22] And so he was really, like, manipulative, like, would gaslight me all the time into, like. Like, oh, you didn't do that chore. I was like, yes, I did. Go do it again. It's like that kind of stuff. Just constantly, constantly, like, very, like, abusive mentality.

Weston Smith [01:45:42] And I was like, I can't deal with another transfer of this. I need to get out of here. But I also. I also knew he was really good. He was very charismatic, very smiling, like, very good, like, smiley personality, good sense of humor. And so I wasn't sure if the mission president was actually going to believe me.

Weston Smith [01:45:59] So what I did was I told my mission president I had a crush on him. I was like, I know how to get this guy far away from me. I'm like, if I tell mission president I have a crush on him, then this problem is going to disappear and we'll never be companions again.

Weston Smith [01:46:15] And it felt. I was like, maybe I should have just told him the truth, but, like, it wasn't a guarantee in the same way that this was. So that's what I told my mission president. And then sure enough, the next transfer, he was, you know, on the other side of the mission, so. And I kept working as financial secretary.

Gerardo Sumano [01:46:34] I've. How was it working with church finances on the mission? If there's anything you would like to share it. I. I had. I was an ap, so I was close to secretaries. And I know that there were some weird, sketchy stuff happening with general authorities in Mexico and things.

Weston Smith [01:46:57] So I didn't get anything like that. I was more just kind of blown away by the church's bureaucracy and how well it did what it was supposed to do and also disappointed in the ways that they structured it. So I guess as an example, there's not a single transaction I could make as a financial secretary on behalf of the mission without it getting vetted by professional accountants in Sao Paulo who would look over every single expense that every mission was making and, you know, have to sign off on it. And everything was like.

Weston Smith [01:47:34] Like, the books. The church's books are immaculate. Like, everything is recorded. Everything is. They know exactly where all the money is going all the time, and if something seems awry, they'll come in and they'll pressure you about it. And so it was a lot of pressure just because of that.

Weston Smith [01:47:52] And I don't know, the one incident that really sticks in my mind was these sisters that had gotten robbed in their area at gunpoint and had lost all their money. And it was an area where the members. There weren't enough members to consistently feed them.

Weston Smith [01:48:07] And so they called the mission president, were like, we need money for groceries because we just got robbed. And the president was like, okay, well, Elder Smith, can you make this happen? I was like, did the thieves give them a receipt? Because Sao Paulo's not going to like that. I don't have a receipt for this. And it took both of me and my mission president calling Sao Paulo the Sao Paulo headquarters for Brazil, and going really far up the chain of, like, financial command in order to get grocery money for these sisters.

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:43] Wow.

Weston Smith [01:48:44] And it took a lot. Even after that, they're like, we had to go to the notary. Both president and I had to get our signatures notarized for this thing. And it was a huge hassle. And the money still took a week for that to arrive in their accounts. And that kind of stuck with me. I was like, this is kind of where the church's priorities are. Because for everything else, you know, ordering materials, ordering Book of Mormons, ordering, you know, all this other stuff, it was very streamlined and very easy. But, like, for. For getting the missionaries their money, it was.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:15] Which is not that much, right?

Weston Smith [01:49:16] Like, no, that's the other thing. It was. It was like. I don't know, it was 170reais. So it was like, I don't know what the exchange rate is now, but back then, it was like one to four. So like, I don't know, like, US$40.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:29] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:49:30] To get them each per sister. Right. And like, I don't know, my president at a certain point was just so frustrated. He's like, can I just give them my credit card? I'm like, no, no, no, you can't. And I don't know, it's just a lot of like, like I said, it shows you where the church's priorities are. And then. Yeah. It's just also crazy to me that like, because I've since, since then looked at like what actual accountants do. And I was basically a full time accountant, plus a missionary bookkeeper.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:05] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:50:05] Because I was paying all of the rent for all of the missionaries. I was paying the light bills, I was paying the water bills, I was paying, you know, and I was keeping track of all of this. Like, like an accountant had to.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:17] And so how about the mission president's expenses? Did you keep track of those?

Weston Smith [01:50:21] All of those? Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:22] How is it seeing, did it cause any dissonance seeing how a mission president would spend money versus how missionaries are like giving so little?

Weston Smith [01:50:31] It would have if my mission president were a different man. He was very, very frugal with the church money because he told us all the time. He told me all the time because sometimes he would have to. Again, this also, I think ties into the last mentioned president who would spend all of this money for like mission wide parties and things like that if they met baptism goals. But for him it was like, this is some ladies, two mites, right? You save all of this money as much as you can because it is sacred, it's very precious. And so he was very frugal about it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:51:06] And yeah, now sometimes that can translate to missionaries in the field not having enough food or not having enough good mattresses, where to sleep.

Weston Smith [01:51:16] He didn't care. Well, he cared about that, but not as much as his wife did. His wife was like the one who would always come in and be like. A lot of the times the sisters were scared to call the mission office for the materials they need because the elders wouldn't always be as willing to cooperate. So they'd call sister the, you know, the wife. The wife and get her to come and be like, elder, you need to buy this, this and this for these missionaries. So it worked. I mean, and also when we were looking at different places for missionaries to rent, like we were both mission president and his wife made sure that we were looking like safety was the number one priority and that they actually lived in good living places because, yeah, I know that that's also like a kind of something that people have experienced on their missions is like they live in like this absolute hole in the wall and like super violent community.

Weston Smith [01:52:16] But we really tried and like, I tried a lot. Like, there was a lot of hoops I had to jump through to make some of those things happen. And you know, we jumped through them because, you know, it's worth it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:52:27] So that's good to hear.

Weston Smith [01:52:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:33] I always, I was never in the office. I was always like opening areas, branch president Bab, you know, trying to do the baptism thing. And I always envied the office elders. It seemed like it would be, it's closer to the power, which I don't think at the time I thought that way, but I think instinctively I knew it's where the money is, it's where the decisions are, it's where the mission president is, it's where the power is. They had cars, they had better food. You know, it just seemed so. I mean, I'm wondering if you experienced it as like, yeah, I'm kind of lucky. I kind of have a good.

Weston Smith [01:53:12] Or were you hating a little bit

John Dehlin [01:53:13] or were you feeling the opposite? Were you feeling like, I'm a slacker, I should be out in the field, like, well, what was it like being an office elder, especially given your context.

Weston Smith [01:53:23] Yeah. So I guess for me, I felt really useful for like the first time in my life because I was doing like, I knew how to code a little bit. So I, instead of, I set up, I made it way easier for every financial secretary who came after me. And I know that for a fact because I automated a lot of the processes that were, you know, taking a long time, like paying each individual light bill. Like some of it had started to be automated, but like, I was one of the people who went through. And because I knew how to do a little bit of coding and some stuff in Excel, I managed to like make the whole thing a lot easier and make them run more efficiently.

Weston Smith [01:54:00] And so I felt like I was being really useful. And you know, you get to see, you know, the effects of that work pretty in both a positive and a negative way. If you forget to pay someone's light bill, you better believe you're going to get a call and they will let you know.

Weston Smith [01:54:16] And so, yeah, just all of that, I felt like I was being useful. There was a little bit of like after working, because we worked from seven to five every day and then we were supposed to go out and proselyte for another five hours and.

Weston Smith [01:54:32] And there were multiple occasions where, like. Because we would also have to walk an hour to get to our area from the mission office because the mission office was technically like another area. And so there was some. There were some nights where, like, me and my companion would just look at each other and be like, not happening tonight. Like, we are not making it to our area. And we would feel bad about that, like, pretty consistently.

Weston Smith [01:55:02] But I mean, it's like, what. What were you going to do? Like, we had a bunch of work and needed to stay late in the office. Like, couldn't really do anything about it. So.

John Dehlin [01:55:11] Okay, all right, so mix maybe.

Weston Smith [01:55:15] Yeah. And we also didn't get to drive, even though we were in the office, because no one in Brazil drives or none of the missionaries do anyways. So. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:26] All right. So how. How did things develop in advance for you?

Weston Smith [01:55:32] So after the mission office, I went to a couple of other areas and I don't know. So at that point, I kind of. The mission office was good because I could really just focus on the good I was doing for the other missionaries and not worry as much about, like, the gospel principles that were causing a lot of conflict for me. But once I got back into the field, it started really, you know, the dissonance was hitting really hard because I knew at this point that I was going to probably leave the church at some point because I.

Weston Smith [01:56:15] The thing that I. Because I would pray about this all the time. I was really trying to seek personal revelation about what God wanted me to do. Right. And I got to the point where I was like, if God gives me an answer that is contrary to the church, I don't care at this point because it's my personal revelation and no one else can tell me what to do with it.

Weston Smith [01:56:35] So I was praying really hard for several months trying to get an answer to, you know, what should I do about this whole gay thing? And I don't know, I would. I would talk. I got to the point where I started talking about it with, like, pretty much all of my companions, just to see what, if anyone. I was so desperate for anyone to have an answer that I hadn't already thought of or like some miracle, like, oh, how had I missed that kind of thing?

Weston Smith [01:57:07] And, yeah, it just got to the point where it really depended on the mission companion how well I was going to do in that area. If the companion was kind of more homophobic than I was going to do poorly if they weren't, then I was going to do well.

Weston Smith [01:57:24] At this point, I also want to say Like, I don't know, God bless the Brazilians. Just because. I don't know, it might have just been the batch that I got, but I. All of my Brazilian companions were way more understanding than any of the other companions I got on the mission. I think part of that is just because of the culture in Brazil. It's a lot more loose when it comes to stuff with sex. But, yeah, I don't know. I think the best friendships I made out of any of them, out of any of the people on the mission were all Brazilians. And so really grateful to them also just really grateful for the people in Brazil and, you know, all the.

Weston Smith [01:58:02] All the love that they showed me and all of that. I'm just thinking back on it. I'm still just kind of. Kind of floored and I don't know, I really want to go back at some point, but so I guess the last kind of mission companion I had.

John Dehlin [01:58:19] How long. How many months into your time in Brazil are we now in your story?

Weston Smith [01:58:24] So mission. So I get. Go to the mission office with four months on the mission, and then I leave the mission office after eight months. So I'm a year and two months on the mission. And then I have a couple of transfer that, you know, go pretty well because the. I got a good back, a couple set of companions. And did you come out to any of them? Yeah, I came out to pretty much everyone at this point.

John Dehlin [01:58:47] Even though your mission president told you not to?

Weston Smith [01:58:49] Yeah, because it was tearing me up so much. I was like. They could see that I was like, visibly upset most of the time.

John Dehlin [01:58:56] Like, can you talk about. And it's going to be varied with. Depending on who you came out to. But like, I'm sure there's a lot of people thinking, what's it like in 20, whatever to come out to your Mormon?

Weston Smith [01:59:10] So I could. I could give you a rundown. So the first couple of companions I had before going into the mission office, two Brazilians who I came out to. We're pretty.

John Dehlin [01:59:24] Did you have to learn the word for gay in Brazilian?

Weston Smith [01:59:26] It's just.

John Dehlin [01:59:26] It's just gay in Portuguese.

Weston Smith [01:59:28] Just gay.

John Dehlin [01:59:29] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [01:59:29] Brazilian.

John Dehlin [01:59:30] I mean, Guatemala. I'm sorry? In Portuguese. In Guatemala, there was a word for butterfly that was used, but I think

Weston Smith [01:59:36] it was a pejorative.

John Dehlin [01:59:37] I think there was a pejorative, right?

Evan Smith [01:59:39] Yeah, they have that too, but it's

Weston Smith [01:59:42] the word for deer.

John Dehlin [01:59:43] Okay.

Weston Smith [01:59:44] And it is. It's. It's pejorative. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:47] So you. You have to find the right word and you wouldn't learn that growing up.

Weston Smith [01:59:51] Yeah, well, I would just say gay. And they would normally understand because I did look it up before I went on the mission. I was like, how do I, how do I not botch this? And so I came out to a couple of Brazilians. One of them, I felt was, I love this guy so much.

Weston Smith [02:00:09] He was on the mission as like a 25 year old, 20, maybe even 26. He's like, I put in my papers on the last day possible. And his life story was basically that he was making a bunch of money and spent it all on, you know, whatever party he could go to in Sao Paulo. Because he lived in downtown Sao Paulo, which is like this massive city.

Weston Smith [02:00:31] So he's like, yeah, dude, I've tried. He had a bunch of tattoos and was like, I've tried every single drug you can possibly imagine. And he's like. I was like, he had like a come to Jesus moment when he woke up and like, yeah, just like, totally, like, I don't know, didn't remember anything that had happened, like for the past three or four days. And he's like, maybe I need to find God. And that's how he joined the church and then went on a mission. And so, I don't know, I felt comfortable telling him because it was like he'd probably already seen this kind of stuff before.

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:03] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:01:04] And he was just a very chill guy. I love him so much. And we got along very well. And other Brazilian companion, how would they say?

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:14] Just like, that's cool.

Weston Smith [02:01:17] It's like awesome. Yeah, dude, like, it's whatever.

Evan Smith [02:01:23] Did any of them say they admired you for being in the church and for doing what you're doing?

Weston Smith [02:01:28] Some of them are just like, yeah, dude, I don't know why you're here. Like that exact kind of tone. Like, I don't know why you're here. But you know, kudos, man. Like, good luck. Yeah, I had a couple who were like, yeah, dude, you know, during carnival, after a lot of alcohol, you know, I might be a little bit gay too. It's okay.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] These are the Brazilians.

Weston Smith [02:01:49] Yeah, these are Brazilians. Yeah. Because I don't know, a lot of the Brazilians have like these really interesting life stories before they come on the mission. It's a very different culture than like the US where it's like, you have to be, you know, Utah, where it's like, I don't know, I kind of surprised me when I got back on a mission to hear like, people who broke the law of chastity with Their girlfriend, like, a year before their mission, couldn't go. I was like, I know a guy who. The bishop walked in on his house for a home teaching appointment the day before he was supposed to go on his mission.

Weston Smith [02:02:21] And he was there, like, in the middle of the act with the girl. And, like, bishop was just like, dude, you need to go on the mission. I can't deal with this anymore. Like, get out of my ward. Get out of my ward.

John Dehlin [02:02:32] Bishop Roulette's real.

Weston Smith [02:02:33] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:02:33] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:02:34] And. And so I don't know. It's just a very different mentality. And so I. I don't know. There were a couple of Americans, though, who kind of grew up in a different culture. And not even, like, the. Because I was used to, like, the east coast kind of, you know, way that we would talk about it, because people in my ward even were supportive of me coming out. And I want to give them a lot of credit for that. Like, my ward was never somewhere where I felt like I was going to experience a lot of homophobia.

Weston Smith [02:03:07] So one of the people I came out to on a mission was an Elder who told me that as good as my arguments were for gay marriage and that it should be legal, I should watch Ben Shapiro to see how to actually argue about this.

Weston Smith [02:03:23] And that was like, okay, maybe president was right. Maybe I should tell everyone about this. And. Yeah, but. So that was one response I got. And then, yeah, I don't know. Coming out to everyone else on the mission, most of them were, like, very kind of okay about it. Like, they could understand. Some of them really wanted to know more about the, like, the doctrine behind it. And, like, because they started. I think I started clicking where they're like, wait, this isn't right. Like, I need to know more about this so I can actually see if there's.

Weston Smith [02:03:58] If this is a shelf item for me or not. Like, if this is something I'm gonna have to tuck away in the corner and kind of forget about to keep my testimony. And so.

John Dehlin [02:04:07] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:04:10] But, yeah, so this last Elder, I was about 18 months on my mission. And again, he's, like, a very nice guy. The thing I remember the most about him is that he would wash the dishes every single time after we ate at a member's house, which is something I had not seen anyone else do because, I don't know, normally when you're there, it's like the members are trying to do everything to help you. And a lot of them would try not to let him wash the dishes. Like, no, you're Our guest and he's like, no, I'm going to do this.

Weston Smith [02:04:41] And so very kind hearted and like genuinely cared about all the people that we were teaching. And it really stung when I came out to him and it wasn't the response I was expect expecting. As soon as, like the day after I came out to him. It started like every single day while we were walking from, from appointment to appointment. You do a lot of walking and so it's a lot of time just to talk.

Weston Smith [02:05:07] We would debate back and forth about, well, what is God's purpose? You know, God's purpose is. And you know, what is a bird's purpose? Like, what is a man and a woman's purpose kind of thing. And like asking me all these kind of leading questions to try and get me to say a certain thing, right? It's like.

Weston Smith [02:05:28] And I think it was his way of trying to like, help me resolve my doctrinal doubts and reconcile things. But it just made things worse because I'm like, I've already been down this rodeo and the way you're doing it is very condescending. I didn't tell him this at the time, but I was just like, I don't think this is working.

Weston Smith [02:05:48] Until it got to the point where it was like, I kind of went, I kind of just laid it all out for him. I'm like, I could either be celibate, I could do a mixed orientation marriage that's probably gonna fall apart statistically, or I can date people and try and get married and have my own family that way. And it's still gonna be difficult, but it's gonna be, you know, doable because I'm gonna be with someone I love. And then he kind of said to me, he sat there for a second thinking about it. He's like, you know, I understand how much this means to you and all these arguments that you have, but at the end of the day, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to look at that.

Weston Smith [02:06:33] I don't think God's ever going to be able to look at a man in a relationship with another man as anything different than like a man with a horse kind of thing.

John Dehlin [02:06:41] Cool.

Weston Smith [02:06:42] And I was just floored by that. And I was just like, okay, we're done, let's go home. Like, we're just going home. We're done teaching for today. Because I just had it and it made so much sense in retrospect to look back at some of the other things. Like some of the other elders had said. To me and be like, oh, they were looking at me as a horse kind of thing or as some sexual pervert rather than an actual. They didn't see the type of love that I saw. Right. When I was talking about gay love, I was talking about wanting to hold hands with this guy. I was talking about wanting to, like, hug him and, you know, start a family and have that your life. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:24] Share your dreams, your hopes.

Weston Smith [02:07:26] And they were just seeing this as you are a sexual pervert with a weird fetish bestiality. Yeah. And that kind of. When it kind of said in, like, all these different things, I'm like, oh, if you actually saw it this way, maybe you wouldn't want this to be legalized kind of thing. And, like, I started realizing that a lot of these arguments kind of were just, you know, personal attacks on me or what they thought of as gay people rather than, like, actually trying to understand me. And when that started setting in retroactively and the dominoes kind of started falling, I was just like, okay, I'm in a bad spot now. And I had been praying this whole time. I'd been trying to be super righteous. I was a zone leader at this point, too. Like, I was doing everything that I could, and it still wasn't enough.

John Dehlin [02:08:19] Were there, Were there ever any companions? One of the reactions I probably would have had as a probably homophobic Mormon missionary, But one of the reactions I think many would expect would be companions that would say, hey, don't you get any ideas with me. You know, I'm like, I. Are you gonna like me? Are you gonna be looking at me? You know, looking at me? Like that type of reaction. I, I.

Weston Smith [02:08:45] There were a couple who were kind of like that, but once I saw that I, I wasn't like that. That kind of, you know, okay, just dissipated. There were a couple of Brazilians who you're like, oh, so which elder do you think is the hottest? Then? Like, they're like, if you have to pick one, pick one to marry, you know, pick an elder. Like, I'm like, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:08] And kind of like a girlfriend.

Weston Smith [02:09:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:11] Like a gay. Like a gay guy's girlfriend, basically.

Weston Smith [02:09:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:15] Being fun with it.

Weston Smith [02:09:16] Yeah. Having fun with it.

John Dehlin [02:09:17] Oh, fun, okay. But you never felt like someone was hostile or even violent?

Weston Smith [02:09:23] No, not really. Not really, Thankfully. Yeah. And so sorry.

John Dehlin [02:09:29] Back to this elder.

Weston Smith [02:09:29] Yeah. And at that point, we were going in this area, and I was really living two different lives just because there was, like, the life I had in my head and the life I was showing to everyone else. And I was putting on this happy, you know, missionary kind of with a testimony act to all the people who were teaching, all the members. And then in my head, I was just like tearing myself apart because I just didn't. I felt like I needed to stay on the mission, but I also knew I needed to go home because of. I was like. The suicidal thoughts started coming back at that point and I was feeling so trapped that, like, I don't know if I can paint it ever even notice this, but there was this one bridge that we would have to walk over, this like, overpass that went over a highway.

Weston Smith [02:10:18] And every single time we walked over that overpass, starting at a certain point, it. I would have to walk on the inside of the road just to, like, keep myself from doing anything. And it just. I tried so hard to do like the love thing and have that be my reason for staying on the mission, being like, I love the people here. They need to know this, they need to hear this, and they need. They need to, you know, need the gospel. And then just the more that the. I started really examining things, the more I'm like, this is just not true. This isn't the reason I'm here.

Weston Smith [02:10:52] I'm here because of, you know, just because I'm kind of trapped here at this point. Like I. Because I need to be Mormon to, like, keep people at home happy. Yeah, I don't know. It's. It's. I've. That overpass still is just for me. It's just. I can picture it so clearly and exactly, like, it was only like one foot of clearance between, like, they don't have like, the massive, like, fence that they have and like overpasses a lot of places in the U.S. it was just like one foot. It was like, it could be so easy and.

Weston Smith [02:11:34] Yeah, I just. Yeah, it was. I started realizing, like, I need to go home, like. Cause I knew what my limit was from high school. I was like, I know how far I can. How far I can push the misery before I start to break. And I was reaching my limit.

Evan Smith [02:11:51] That's what you promised me before you left. Yeah, he promised me. I told him I would check every week with him. I would ask him the same question. How are you doing mental health wise? He would tell me.

John Dehlin [02:12:05] I mean, your mom, she. She had that motherly instinct before you ever left, right?

Evan Smith [02:12:10] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:12:11] Yeah. And on the entirety of the mission, she kept telling me just to come home because I think I would say certain things in the emails and she was probably the only one who actually Knew, like, all the stuff I wasn't saying because she had also been in a lot of those places before.

Evan Smith [02:12:29] It was funny because he would actually write to me and his seminary teacher, who's like one of our best, closest family friends, very progressive and very great guy to his aunt that he came out to first, and he would tell us, the three of us, the bad stuff, like the hard stuff that he didn't want to necessarily tell Cheryl, but Cheryl read between the lines on everything else and she knew how hard things were for him. It was an interesting time as a parent to. To feel such worry over your son who's thousands of miles away and you can't even talk to him. I was. It was before the calls weekly.

John Dehlin [02:13:08] It was just.

Evan Smith [02:13:09] We were just exchanging emails.

John Dehlin [02:13:10] So you could only talk by phone to your parents. How frequent?

Weston Smith [02:13:17] God, what's the name of this? In English? Yeah. Mother's Day and Christmas.

John Dehlin [02:13:22] So twice you could call home twice a year, Mother's Day and Christmas.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:27] And do you think you had any idea, Evan, of how bad it was?

Weston Smith [02:13:34] Actually at the very. A couple weeks before I came home, that's when the policy was instituted. Oh, that you could call. Yeah. And I remember I was the zone leader, right. And I got a call from the AP being like, you need to tell this to your zone. I'm like, haha, very funny. And I hung up on him. I was like, funny prank dude. Like, because we had a good relationship. And he called me back. He's like, I'm serious, man. Like, you can call home. He's like, you have to tell the rest of your missionaries that they can, you know, actually call home this week or like, you know, video chat.

Evan Smith [02:14:05] And so we video chatted with Wes for those, like the last month of his mission. And every time it was almost like, hard to find a place where you could tell us how you're really feeling because your companion was like, right next to you.

Gerardo Sumano [02:14:17] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:14:18] It's like you can't really be honest about what's.

Gerardo Sumano [02:14:20] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:14:21] Yeah. But also it's in. In Brazil, you're in public at an Internet cafe.

Evan Smith [02:14:25] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:14:25] And people are already looking at you weird because you're speaking English and like this tiny little. You're in the middle of the favela and no one speaks any other languages except Portuguese. And so, yeah, it was just, it was an interesting experience to do that. But every single time, my mom told me, she's like, you know, just come home. Just come home over and over again.

Gerardo Sumano [02:14:46] So, like, if you're having trouble Problems with your companion. If your companion is being abusive, you can't tell your parents because your next to you listening.

Weston Smith [02:14:54] Well, sometimes I could complain about them because they didn't speak English, but it was like that was the only way you could. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:04] That's hard.

Evan Smith [02:15:05] Tell them about that thing. So I was blown away with an email you sent one time about the proclamation.

Weston Smith [02:15:13] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:15:16] So blown away, I actually incorporated it into my book. About what? The proclamation.

Weston Smith [02:15:19] Honestly, I've kind of forgotten the exact realization I had about it. But basically there's this one talk because I started dreading like. Like you were saying earlier. I started dreading every single general conference just because I knew that they were going to, you know, President Oaks was going to get up there and say something that made me have, you know, made me like, question everything for the next six months until he said something else. I may question something different for the next six months. And I think this time it was Elder Anderson who got up and gave a talk about.

Weston Smith [02:15:54] And talked a ton about a family proclamation to the world. I was like, you know what? They keep bringing this up. Let's go home and study this. Like, that's just. I'm going to study this in English. I'm going to study this in Portuguese. I'm going to study this in French because I learned how to read French on the mission too.

Weston Smith [02:16:10] And so I was like, I'm gonna study this in all three languages. I'm gonna see if there's anything like here that like, you know, doesn't line up with what they're saying. And I forget what the exact. I'd have to look at the exact wording again to see what the. And, like, look at my journal to see if the exact realization I have. But it was something along the lines of, even though it says marriage is ordained between a man and a woman, the rest of it, it doesn't necessarily say that like gay marriage is. It doesn't condemn gay marriage. Right. It just says, you know, this is how marriage. This is a way that marriage is ordained of God.

Evan Smith [02:16:43] Not the only way.

Weston Smith [02:16:43] It's not the only way. And so same with sex.

Evan Smith [02:16:47] It says sexual. It doesn't say sexual relations are only between man and woman. It says the power of procreation is only between man and woman and gay sex isn't procreating. So it's like you can read the proclamation literally, and it doesn't prohibit gay marriage.

Weston Smith [02:17:01] Yeah. And so when I. I was blown away.

Evan Smith [02:17:03] I was like, whoa, wow.

Weston Smith [02:17:04] Yeah. So when I had that realization I was like, so they're using this? It was more. It was also kind of just like, okay, so the church is just being homophobic because they're being homophobic and they don't want me here.

Weston Smith [02:17:18] Combine that with what the elder had. Like, that was. I think that was the same week that the elder had said that thing about the horse to me, and I was just like, okay. I had this real. At the time, I was like, the most powerful spiritual experience that I'd ever had. Again, looking back, I'm like, I don't know if I would use the word spiritual, but it was just this overwhelming confirmation because I got on my knees and I asked God, I said, you know, if I do date, if I do get married, if I do, you know, foster kids, I promise I will do the best job that I possibly can to do it as righteously as I can, and these kids will be good people, and I'll marry a good man, and I'll be a good man for.

Weston Smith [02:18:03] For this family. And I promised that to. To God. And after reading the proclamation that in that way, I felt this overwhelming sensation that. And I just started crying and crying, and there's, like, tears of joy at being like, yes, that's okay. Like, why wouldn't that be okay?

Weston Smith [02:18:26] And so all of that combined. Combined with, like, the already the mental health stuff that was going on, I was like, okay, I'm going home now. So at this point, you know, I told my mission president about this, and then this is where we had a couple of the conversations where I'm kind of like, okay. He just was not equipped to deal with what I was dealing with.

Weston Smith [02:18:53] We started talking. I'd asked him a bit about my patriarchal blessing, because my patriarchal blessing says that I'm going to marry a woman. And it came up, and he used. So knowing I was from Boston, he used the analogy of the super bowl where the patriots were losing 28 to three.

Weston Smith [02:19:13] And he said, you know, if you looked at the final score of that game and saw that the Patriots won, there was no way that you were going to believe that. But they did. And so it's like your patriarchal blessing is a final score, and you have to believe that, you know, you're going to marry a woman that's going to happen, even though you have no idea how it's going to happen, how the comeback's going to happen.

Weston Smith [02:19:35] And that was not super helpful for me. And then when I got. When I. When I told him I wanted to go home, he kind of was just like, you know, how much are you talking to your parents about this? I was like, well, I talk to them every week now because of the policy change. He's like, well, maybe you should, you know, cut back on that if they're telling you that you need to go home.

Weston Smith [02:20:00] And I was like, I'm sorry, no. Like, that's not going to happen. Like, I've, like, I'm not gonna, like, not listen to my parents over this. Like, I'm sorry. Like, that's just not gonna happen.

Evan Smith [02:20:13] It just isn't cool, right? I mean, you're talking about the mental health of a child on the other side of the world and you're trying to keep him alive. And you have someone in the church who's a loving, kind guy and well intentioned, but giving advice that's going to cause further trauma and harm and just very risky to do that. And as a dad, I was, I was pissed.

Weston Smith [02:20:32] I don't think, I don't think he realized how much mental health stuff I was going through. I know, but to be fair to him, but yeah, I, that's kind of where at that point I got, I got put on a plane and came home.

John Dehlin [02:20:49] So he didn't just openly resist?

Weston Smith [02:20:51] No, he was very sad. Like, very, very, like, disheartened. And like, I don't know, every time I saw him after that, he was, he was like, you know, I'm letting you go. And he, like, he made it clear how much he loved me. And he didn't ever say, like, you know, I'm disappointed in you or whatever, but he was. You could tell from his body language that he was just like, really distraught. So.

John Dehlin [02:21:16] And you had gone on a mission to redeem yourself. So I'm just wondering. And even though you feel like you're doing the right thing by leaving, how could you also not feel like you're failing again? And I don't mean to be planting that because maybe you didn't feel that way, but I guess that is a question.

Weston Smith [02:21:31] If I hadn't gotten that confirmation, that overwhelming confirmation, right? That to me was at the time I was like, this is my personal revelation from God right now. I think it's just I have different opinions about all of these, like, spiritual experiences. But anyways, it's.

John Dehlin [02:21:47] Can I just say, in Gerardo, I don't know if I've ever told you this. So my dissertation for my PhD, we surveyed 16, 12 LGBTQ Mormons, and one of the questions we asked them was, did you ever get to have a Spiritual experience affirming your same sex sexuality and something crazy. Like 45 to 50% of them did receive a spiritual experience supporting or affirming their same sex sexuality. They wrote these beautiful narratives about they were in the desert, had a gun, they were ready to end it all, and then spirit descended. How could it be any different than what Joseph Smith claimed?

Weston Smith [02:22:30] That's really what that's. I wrote. I remember like using the language like that and when writing about it because like, this is such an overwhelming experience for me and you. Yeah. And it finally let me see the church for like, okay. I'm like, this is not my religion anymore. I don't need this anymore.

Evan Smith [02:22:53] When he shared it with me like that, I thought and told him that I probably used the wrong case from scripture. I should have used a different one. But I said, you know how Nephi broke a commandment because he was prompted to and he was told to kill Laban. Like, it's a bad example. But still I was like, there can be, there's scriptural examples. Adam and Eve, for example, they broke a commandment because it was what God wanted anyway. There's times when you do something against the church, against the rules, against the commandments, because it's actually the right thing to do. It's the best thing to do.

Evan Smith [02:23:24] Again, that Nephi example is a really horrible one. It's not a good example. But I was trying to communicate to Wes that, look, I support you. You don't need. Even from the church perspective, there's rationale for being outside the church because it's what you need to do and that's what God's telling you to do. I was 100% like, that's what God is telling you to do. I believed his revelation.

John Dehlin [02:23:44] And so I was going to say Holy Ghost for the win.

Evan Smith [02:23:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:48] And so glad you had the parents you had. Because there's the Mormon teaching that a spirit can be of God or spirit can be of the devil that can deceive you into making you think that that spirit is of God.

Weston Smith [02:24:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:03] And so if you had the wrong parents or the wrong leaders, they very well could have tried.

Weston Smith [02:24:07] To that point though I was.

John Dehlin [02:24:09] Wouldn't have worked.

Weston Smith [02:24:10] No. It was such an overwhelming, overwhelming experience. I could not have been convinced otherwise.

John Dehlin [02:24:14] I was like, yay.

Weston Smith [02:24:16] Yeah. And so I was like, you know what? I've got my own God at this point. It's like, it's just me and him. And I had the confirmation that if I kept living my life the way I had been and really, honestly, trying that, like, he was going to be fine with the end result, you know, and so I didn't need to worry about any of the, like, specific commandments or anything. And I think, honestly, that's still, to an extent, like, what I believe, like, if there is a God and, you know, an afterlife and there is a final judgment, like, I'm gonna say, like, look, I did everything exactly to the best that I could, and if you want to judge me for that, then, like, that's on you at this point.

Weston Smith [02:24:53] At that point. Right. And, yeah, so it was. Honestly, coming home didn't really feel like I didn't get the traditional, like, Mormon missionary comes home early experience. I got welcomed with open arms and. Because most of my extended family also was kind of on their way out at that point.

Evan Smith [02:25:15] Well, yeah, most of Cheryl's family was kind of on the way out,

Weston Smith [02:25:21] and. Yeah. And so, I don't know. I had a lot of people there to support me. And again, growing up in this ward, they were very supportive. And so I didn't really face a lot of the, like, fallout that you might have if you had come home early, like, under. Under different circumstances.

Evan Smith [02:25:40] I was in the state presidency and had conversations with the stake president, obviously, about it. And he was a good guy and felt strongly that Wes should have a regular homecoming, not a homecoming of shame. And so he actually gave a report to the High Council, like all missionaries do when they come home. Yeah, he spoke in church, gave a homecoming talk.

Weston Smith [02:25:59] Like, that's the last sacrament meeting I ever went to was my homecoming talk. And after, I was just like, I'm done. And I. I literally did not want to hear anyone say anything about the church for, like, the next two years, because I was so. There were so many other things I needed to process, too, at that point. And that's when I finally started doing therapy and all that stuff, so. And then eventually, you know, a couple years later, here I am, and I finally am, like, willing to talk about it and write the book and all this stuff, so.

Evan Smith [02:26:27] In a good place finally.

Weston Returns Home and Leaves the Church

John Dehlin [02:26:29] So how many years ago were you coming home from your mission?

Weston Smith [02:26:33] Four now.

John Dehlin [02:26:33] Four. Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:26:34] Okay.

Weston Smith [02:26:35] 20.

Evan Smith [02:26:35] 19.

Weston Smith [02:26:36] 2019.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:37] Before or after the reversal of the policy?

Evan Smith [02:26:41] April.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:42] April was the reversal.

Evan Smith [02:26:43] He came home in May. May of 2019.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:45] So after.

Evan Smith [02:26:46] So right after. Yeah, right after the November 2015 policy got reversed. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:26:50] That didn't. The reversal didn't fix it all for you?

Weston Smith [02:26:54] I honestly didn't even know it had happened. I don't. I don't think. Yeah, I Don't think it was on my radar because I was so it's different when you're like in the moment, like teaching people about the gospel every day, like the fundamentals of the gospel, right. If you're giving a lesson about Joseph Smith every single day, you know, the policy doesn't matter as much. It's like, do I believe in Joseph Smith? And all this other, all these other things. It's like at that point that's kind of when the rest of it kind of fell apart where I'm like, I don't believe in the fundamental organization of the church anymore,

John Dehlin [02:27:24] man. I have to ask you. This is a hard question, Hard question for me, like, my notion of spirituality is so tainted because now I associate all these teachings about the Holy Ghost and warm fuzzies and prayer with the conditioning of a high demand religion such that like, I have a tendency personally not to evangelize this, but just personally to say, you can't trust any of that, like, that's all conditioning. That's all hooey, hocus pocus, woo. And it's just chemicals and electrical impulses and that's what's going on. Then you tell me about your experience. And there's no, there's no profit. There's no like, you know, there's no charlatan that's, or, or rich, wealthy corporation that's manipulating you.

John Dehlin [02:28:19] You have. And it's, there's not even any source of a church or anything. You just have this theophany, I'll call it when you shouldn't be having it. And it like feels real and it's meaningful and, and it is transformative. And every time I'm trying, like, yeah, but surely it was hard here and there, you're like, nope, I knew from that point on. I knew then I'm just like, what the freak Was that like, was that like the divine? Was that the gay Holy Ghost? Was that the real Holy Ghost?

Weston Smith [02:28:50] No. So looking back at it, I love that I like the gay Holy Ghost though. Yeah. I think looking back at it, it was just years and years of me doing constant battle with myself, right? It's like, am I a loser? Am I like sinful? Am I enough? Right? And finally realizing that, like I didn't have a reason to hate myself the way I thought I did once. That really sunk in.

Weston Smith [02:29:26] In that moment, it changes everything, right? It actually gave me self esteem for the first time really my entire life. And that totally changes how you act as a person, right? When you think that your life is Worth something versus I'm only here because I don't want people to have to attend my funeral.

Weston Smith [02:29:47] It changes everything. And so I was like, if my life is worth something, I'm sure as hell not going to be spending it teaching people things that they I don't believe in. Like, I was willing to do that if it meant that I could get some self esteem out of it. But now that I have that, it's like, what am I doing? Like, I. My time is worth more than this, right? Like, I'm gonna go home and my mental health is worth more than this. Like, I'm a valuable person.

John Dehlin [02:30:13] Dang.

Weston Smith [02:30:14] And so that, that's kind of what it was for me, I think, looking back on it. And it's the same. It's interesting because every single time I felt like the spirit in my life, it's been someone telling me that my life is valuable and that my life is worth living.

Weston Smith [02:30:27] And so when my mission president would tell me these things, right? Or tell me about the love of the Atonement and that, you know, my life had so much value to Christ, I would feel like warm, the warm fuzzies, you know, and attribute that to the spirit. Or when I was in, you know, hospital scrubs, crying in my brother's bed, like, praying to God and having that like, internal realization that like, my life was worth something again, the warm fuzzies. And, and attribute it to the Spirit. And I don't know, I think, I don't know if it's my consciousness. I don't know what it is.

Weston Smith [02:31:02] I've stopped asking what it is because it doesn't matter at this point to me. It's just, it's just the, like the intrinsic value of human life to me.

Evan Smith [02:31:09] That's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say, I wonder if it's instinct. Like, you know, we've evolved for millions and millions of years and the things that make us feel the need to continue living or the need to bond together as a society or as humans and relate to each other and that all is very, very powerful. I think those emotions are real and they can really be revelatory in a real way.

Weston Smith [02:31:36] So.

John Dehlin [02:31:38] And I wasn't necessarily fishing for any right answer, but it sounds like what you're saying is you, you have not interpreted those experiences as literally some, some higher power sending some divine messenger or his own higher power to enlighten and save and strengthen and redeem you.

Weston Smith [02:32:00] I think if there is a higher power, you know, like a loving higher power, like, like you know, some sort of God, then he would do those things because he, you know, you know, they would care about whatever, you know, all their creations. But at this point, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's God. I don't have the evidence. Like, I don't. I don't have any way of figuring out what's going on. I just.

Weston Smith [02:32:27] I don't know. It's weird because I'm very kind of just agnostic at this point where it's like, I don't know what's going on. I don't. I just know that I need to live the best life I can, and I know what that looks like for me. And so I don't. Like, why do I need to know if there's a God or not? Like, I. I can. I'm totally fine just letting it be an unknown and figuring that out, you know, when I die or whenever. So.

Evan Smith [02:32:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:51] So right now, for you, that was just your brain? It was just your soul. You.

Weston Smith [02:32:54] It was maybe my brain. Maybe it was God. Like, I don't know. I just. I just know that how it felt. And you're following it. You're going following it. And I know, like, yeah, if it was God, then God's gonna be happy that I'm following it. If it's not God, you know, it's still a positive direction for me to go, so don't need to question it too much, I guess. So.

John Dehlin [02:33:16] Beautiful.

Weston Smith [02:33:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:20] What a happy ending to a mission that wasn't looking so good.

Weston Smith [02:33:24] Yeah. Yeah. I'm. I'm really grateful that, you know, things ended up how they did. And again, I want to give a lot of credit to my parents for. Especially my mom. Right.

Evan Smith [02:33:39] Especially your mom.

Weston Smith [02:33:41] You know. Well, she might have missed a lot of the stuff in high school. I think on the mission. She was really the one who. Yeah. Who, you know, saved me.

Evan Smith [02:33:51] So she's a great example of when, you know, better, do better. And it was like, I know I have a gay kid, and I'm gonna do whatever I can and to get him into a good, healthy place and having a happy life. And she was committed to that. Pushing back against me because I was still kind of at the church frame of mind in some ways. Even though I was very still supportive as I could be with Wes, I still had the believing frame, you know, mindset on. So, Cheryl. Yeah, Cheryl was amazing.

John Dehlin [02:34:18] Shout out to you, Cheryl. Nice work.

Gerardo Sumano [02:34:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:22] Yeah. And you. Stake presidency, dad. Like, doesn't hurt to have to Know that even though your dad is at some of the highest levels of church leadership, that he's got your back. That doesn't suck.

Weston Smith [02:34:35] Yeah, there was.

John Dehlin [02:34:36] Because not all state presidency, Mormon dads are going to react that way.

Weston Smith [02:34:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:42] Many are going to say, you're embarrassing me. You know, you're a disappointment.

Evan Smith [02:34:47] Yeah, there's. Yeah. I mean, in hindsight, I wish I would have. I wish I would have said what Cheryl said, which is, please don't. Don't go on a mission. Instead of saying, you can if you want, instead of saying, you don't have to. Wes, I wish I would have said, this is a really bad idea for you. The church is not healthy for you. And I regret that he experienced 19 months of trauma, more trauma from the church than he had already had. So thank you for saying nice things, but I still kind of beat myself up for not being more understanding of what my son needed in his life for his happiness earlier than I did.

Weston Smith [02:35:24] And something I will say is that a lot of the trauma I went through wasn't necessarily even unique to me being gay. It's like, I think there's a lot of trauma that every single missionary goes through.

Evan Smith [02:35:32] Oh, yeah.

Weston Smith [02:35:33] And it's just not labeled as that. Like, if. I don't know, if you look at it a certain way, it's like a lot of Mormon missionaries are. Could be considered, like, human trafficking victims almost, where it's like, they're doing this labor that, like, you know, they've been really pressured into, and they didn't have much of a choice to say no. And, I mean, I was in the mission office. I locked up people's passports, like, so they couldn't leave. And, you know, when I tried to leave, like, I. Obviously, my mission president didn't push very hard, and he was very sympathetic with me, but there was still that kind of instinct to, like, no, you have to stay here.

Weston Smith [02:36:12] And so, I don't know. I think people really need to examine the institution of the mission within the church and call trauma for what it is. Right. We're not. It shouldn't be an apt comparison that going to the mission is going to war. Right. Because war veterans have ptsd. They have all of these other things. And the fact that that resonates with so many people is. Is. Should be alarming and not, you know, we kind of pat ourselves on the back for that. I feel like the Lord's army. Yeah, the Lord's army. It's like, yeah, yeah. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:36:48] I've said this before, and I may say it every episode, like, just like with women, how in 2022, somehow 5 million Mormons are still okay, including the women, with women being second class citizens. And it's just like, oh yeah, that's how we do things. Like corporate America could never do that. Like, no way. Like school districts couldn't do that. Like pick any organization. Most other churches, totally unacceptable.

John Dehlin [02:37:18] Like the women, Mormon women are okay with it more than the Mormon men are. Like, it's just this. And it's the same thing with LGBT stuff. Like it'd be, you know, I would say stop the presses if one kid died by suicide. And yet you literally have thousands, tens of thousands. Yeah. And like we're all just like, yeah, but that's the Lord in his due time. You know, whether it's believing the homophobic LGBT stuff, which is most Mormons, or like you, it's like, well, this is going to change someday, so I'm going to stay in and fight from within. Which I'm not judging people who fight from within.

John Dehlin [02:37:55] I'm not, I'm not saying that's bad, bad or wrong, but there's something about the permissibility of lgbt, of constant, chronic, continual, reliable lgbt, LGBT deaths. There's something about just like the long standing recurring, repeating genocide that somehow we're just all numb to.

Evan Smith [02:38:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:25] And it's just. Yeah. But you know, we'll figure it out. The church will get better. Okay. You know, even, even ex Mormons will be like, ah, you know, the church is 20 to 30 years behind the times. But like, that's, this is serious.

Evan Smith [02:38:38] Serious.

John Dehlin [02:38:39] Everybody's just kind of like dead to it.

Weston Smith [02:38:41] Yeah. And I don't know, the lack of urgency really upsets me and I think a lot of people, you know the word suicide at this point and like mental health is become such a kind of cliche that that's part of. Also. I wanted to write about this because it's like, it's one thing to say, oh, you know, there's a bunch of kids who are suicidal. It's different to put it in the context of like, there are kids who are like me, that are actively imagining the type of casket their parents are going to pick out for them or who think that their parents going get to give them their eulogies and who.

Weston Smith [02:39:20] There are kids who imagine this every single day because of how the church is treating them or because of how their parents are treating them. And for any number of reasons. But if, if you put it in that context right. And you imagine either you know, your parents or your. Or your children or whatever. It suddenly becomes a lot more urgent. Right.

Weston Smith [02:39:41] It's. We need to do better at recognizing that. And it really makes me angry that people continue just to write it off when that's the reality of the situation.

Evan Smith [02:40:02] Yeah. And I think change is going to come, but it's going to be decades from now, and that's way too late. Way too many lives will be lost between now and then. And that's. I said it in the first part of this podcast, but that's one of the reasons I changed my mind about discussing more transparently the conversations I had with general authorities on this. As a state presidency member. I just.

Evan Smith [02:40:26] We need to start having full, open conversations. Like, I want the general authorities to sit in a room with someone like Kyle Ashworth somebody and just take questions. Like, there needs to be open, public conversations about why this, why that, how do you feel about, you know, suicides? How do you feel? And have someone at the top, highest levels answer the questions, and they're not. They won't do that. It's all very controlled. And when you have people dying from your teachings, you shouldn't be about controlling what you're presenting. You should be about fixing the problem. And that needs to start happening.

John Dehlin [02:41:04] It's this weird, toxic death of empathy.

Evan Smith [02:41:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:08] Where in a weird twist, a church that's named after Jesus is, like, hardening people against empathy.

Evan Smith [02:41:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:18] Weird.

Evan Smith [02:41:18] Yeah. Very weird.

John Dehlin [02:41:21] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:41:22] Now the Lord will change things in due time. Well, how many lives are going to be ruined between now and then?

John Dehlin [02:41:30] And that, I think that's. That makes a good segue for us to kind of maybe close off this episode and go to the third, because, you know, we. We are going to continue to want to have believing Mormons on Mormon stories and even progressive Mormons. We don't want to shame them. We don't want to talk bad about them. We don't want to, like, say that they're not doing courageous, heroic work, because we don't know. But at the same time, I remember, like, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and others saying sometimes progressive Christians are the worst because they're enablers. In some ways, they're the apologists and the enablers that allow for the ongoing pain and suffering.

John Dehlin [02:42:13] And I'm not saying I believe that. I'm not saying that's true. The opposite might be true. They might be the ones saving lives. But I can understand why someone might feel that way, because if you just are like, if you're like, if you're staying in but you believe that it's wrong and you know the church is killing people and you're staying in and you tell yourself that you're doing it because it'll change someday or you're going to help from within. How are you not constantly tormented at a severe level by the carnage you see all around you?

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:54] And how do you. If you pay tithing to it, if you give your name and your reputation to it, how do you survive?

Evan Smith [02:43:01] That's a really good question. I think there's only. Because I thought about that a lot, because that was me for we're going to get there.

John Dehlin [02:43:10] We're going now.

Evan Smith [02:43:11] And I think there are people who are doing it right now who are actually able to pull it off. One of them, I'll just do a quick shout out for Derek Knox. He's a gay Mormon convert to the church, biblical theologian, amazing scriptorian, has a podcast where he talks about how it's wrong according to the scriptures if you really interpret them in the way that they should be interpreted. If we believed our own stuff, gay marriage would be allowed, gay ceilings, full equality would be in the church. And I think if you're able to be that type of progressive believer that is publicly speaking out about it, and maybe not like I took the approach of not paying tithing, not doing a calling, unless it was ministering to LGBTQ people, which I never, never was given that calling because they didn't have it.

Evan Smith [02:44:04] But unless, like, I drew the line and said, I'll be in this church so that I can be a voice from within, but I'm not gonna perpetuate with my money or my time, or I'm only gonna be a voice. That's, I think, how you can pull it off. There's some other people like Stan Mitchell in the evangelical Protestant realm. He's a former pastor of a church he had a coming about, and now he's all about having a church that's very progressive and that sort of thing. I think the mission to change things from within can be done in a very effective way, but you have to. You have to be careful not to like what you're saying. Make. Build up the organization, which is actually making things harder.

John Dehlin [02:44:43] You don't want to be an enabler.

Evan Smith [02:44:44] No.

John Dehlin [02:44:44] You don't want to carry the water for the abusers.

Evan Smith [02:44:46] You don't.

Weston Smith [02:44:47] I also think you have to recognize a lot of the ways that the churches and churches and its leadership have become kind of pharisaical, because, yes, yeah. The other thing that really bothered me on the mission as financial secretary was, you know, this.

Weston Smith [02:45:02] How much Jesus emphasizes about spending money on the poor. Right. And how much the church has and doesn't use to spend on the poor. And it's just. There's that. And. And beyond that, they use their money to back causes that actively go against, you know, gay marriage. And they fight that tooth and nail wherever they can. And so it's like, you have to look at. I look at Christ's condemnation of the Pharisees in the New Testament, and I apply those to the church leaders, and I don't think that they can realistically escape blame at this point.

Weston Smith [02:45:43] And that's going to be my personal opinion. And I know that's harsh for a lot of people to hear, but that's honestly how I feel about it at this point, having studied it and having lived through what I've lived through, where it's just like these people are the people that Christ was trying to warn us about. And I don't think that this is what Christ's church would look like, and it would look like something totally different. And you know what that is? I think it is up to every single person to decide. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:16] Well, Weston, I just can't thank you enough for being willing to share your story so beautifully, so thoughtfully, so vulnerably. This is the type of thing that saves lives. And every, like every cohort of Mormon stories listeners has like a. A set of families or a set of stories that are transformative for them. Maybe you had some that were transformative for you all at one point or another.

Weston Smith [02:46:44] Yeah, yeah. Well, I remember listening to Mormon stories after coming out to my. To my aunt because she recommended. Oh, you should listen to this one episode of Clark. I forget his name. He was a Broadway.

John Dehlin [02:46:58] Clark Johnson.

Weston Smith [02:46:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:46:59] We'll put it in the show notes. It's one of my favorite. He was in the Book of Mormon musicals, the original cast.

Gerardo Sumano [02:47:04] Right.

John Dehlin [02:47:05] One of the best Mormon stories of all time.

Weston Smith [02:47:06] Yeah. And that one. I remember listening to that Mormon stories and just crying because I realized that I was going to have to go through the same journey that he kind of went through with being comfortable with himself. And now it feels rewarding to be on the other end of it and be able to produce something, you know, write about my experience and already have people tell me that it resonates with them and that it's helped them. So I'm just. I'm just grateful and I feel lucky that I was one of the ones who made it. Because I know that there were a lot of times where, you know, a couple things could have gone differently and it wouldn't have been the case. So.

Gerardo Sumano [02:47:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:45] Beautiful. Well, the book is this Body of Water, a memoir by Weston Smith. It's in the show notes. Buy it. Buy the book. Of course, I've already promoted it, but I'll say it again. Evan wrote this book. I'll call it A Gay Love Letter to the Mormon Church. Evan Smith, Gay Latter Day Saints, Crossroads. Two important books by two brilliant men.

Evan Smith [02:48:13] Buy Weston's first, though his is better than mine for sure.

Weston Smith [02:48:17] You can read his for free, too, online.

Evan Smith [02:48:18] Mine's for free on. Yeah. Gayldscrosswords.org gets free download. So.

John Dehlin [02:48:22] Yeah. And so thanks so much to both of you. Gerardo, how you doing?

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:28] Doing great.

John Dehlin [02:48:29] How's, how's, how's part two? You happy with part two? Yeah, for sure. Masomanos. C plus, B minus minus. What do you think?

Weston Smith [02:48:35] A plus, A plus.

John Dehlin [02:48:36] Yes. All right, good. Well, that's not bad. That's two A pluses, then.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:48:40] I mean, this family likes straight A's, so. So don't, don't, don't give us your a, your typical A minus for part part three. Is that all right, Evan?

Evan Smith [02:48:50] Sounds good.

Weston Smith [02:48:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:48:50] Fair.

Evan Smith [02:48:51] I'll try.

Preview of Part Three

John Dehlin [02:48:51] So get this. As amazing as these two parts have been, part three is going to stand toe to toe with the other two parts because now we've got Weston coming home from his mission early while Evan serving in the Stake Presidency. Big time, big shot, international corporate firm lawyer, lots of connections. And how's this going to play out? And how it's going to play out is that Evan starts having questions in the Stake Presidency and he takes him ultimately to two Mormon general authorities, and he's willing to name names, not in a scandalous, defamatory hit piece way, but just in like a transparency way of like, this is how he resolved his, you know, tried to resolve his concerns.

John Dehlin [02:49:40] These are the conversations he had. This is why the conversations weren't necessarily productive or fruitful. And then that'll leave us to where your family, where does your family go? What happens with your dear wife? Does she stay in the church? Does she leave? Does your family stay in the church? Do they leave? Are they still in? Do they resign? Where does all this end up? That's part three, and it's going to be exciting.

Evan Smith [02:50:06] Yeah, I hope so.

John Dehlin [02:50:07] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:50:08] Pressure's on.

John Dehlin [02:50:09] No pressure. Yeah. All right, so thanks for joining us for part two of this epic episode again. Shout out to your lovely wife, your lovely mom.

Evan Smith [02:50:20] Thanks. Yeah, Huge shout out to her.

John Dehlin [02:50:23] She's love.

Weston Smith [02:50:24] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:50:25] Yeah. Love you, Cheryl.

John Dehlin [02:50:26] Love you, Cheryl. Gotta meet you and your sister and your brother at least. And anyway, don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Come right back for part three of this amazing series with Evan and Weston Smith on Mormon Stories Podcast. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see on the flip side.

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 1668

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is August 16, 2022, and we are here in part three of another epic family Mormon story with Evan Smith and Weston Smith. Hey, guys. Hello. How you doing?

Evan Smith [00:00:20] Good.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] You wiped out yet? Are you ready? You ready? Your gas tanks are filled for part three.

Weston Smith [00:00:25] Why not both?

Evan Smith [00:00:26] Yeah, full gas tanks ready to go.

John Dehlin [00:00:29] We're here with Gerardo Samano. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:31] Hey, John. Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] Yeah, and so just to recap, if you haven't watched parts one and two, you want to pause and stop now, go back and watch parts one and two. But basically, part one was all about Evan Smith being raised in Murray, Utah to orthodox, faithful Mormon parents and him doing all the Mormon things, culminating in him getting married in the temple, going on a mission, going to law school and settling in the Boston area and ascending his way up through the Mormon patriarchy into the position of a branch president and eventually Mormon bishop, and raising his Mormon family with his dear wife and also pursuing a position in corporate American law, focusing on startups and

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:28] new

John Dehlin [00:01:28] new business companies and ventures. And when we, you know, left part one, he was a Mormon bishop. His a member of his branch slash ward had come out to him as gay and then eventually his son came out to him as gay and eventually decided to go serve a mission. So that was part one. We paused Evan's story. We jumped to part two where son Weston told us about growing up gay in the Mormon Church with your dad being bishop, what that was like, how he reached a point of sort of heavy suicidal ideation prior to serving a mission. He comes out to his parents, his aunt, his brother, his community, and decides inexplicably, while his dad's serving as a bishop, decides to go ahead and serve a Mormon mission as an out gay Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] And he does, and he gets called to Brazil and he goes to serve in Brazil, he serves in the office, becomes his own leader, serves almost a full mission. But once he reached a second point of suicidality, this time on his mission, he, he has what could be described as a spiritual experience or as a psychological experience, but a very affirming life saving experience where Weston receives a very clear impression that he needs to go home early on his mission, which he does, his mom had been begging him to do that anyway, and his dad is supportive and he goes home early from his mission, but way healthier and way happier and way resolved to leave the Mormon Church and live a happy, healthy life. And by the time you come home what is your calling in the church, Evan?

Evan Smith [00:03:22] First counselor in the Stake Presidency.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] Okay. So while Weston's on his mission, Evan gets called into a Stake presidency, which actually is higher than a bishop within Mormonism, because a grouping of eight or nine or ten Mormon congregations is known as a stake. And. Yeah. So to be in the Stake Presidency means You're one of three main leaders over 8 to 10 Mormon congregations. It's often compared to a Catholic parish. Is that right?

Evan Smith [00:03:55] Or a parish would be like a ward and diocese would be like a

John Dehlin [00:03:57] state to a Catholic diocese.

Evan Smith [00:03:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] Which is kind of big news and kind of cool. So what we're going to do now is we're going to go back in Evan's story and we're gonna have you catch us up on what it's like to go from Bishop Mormon Bishop to Mormon State Presidency member and getting called into that. And then we're gonna retrace your experiences, both of your son being on his mission, but coming home. But really what we're gonna be focusing on for part three is, is once this LGBT issue, once Evan leaves the church. Sorry, once Weston leaves the church, once your wife, as the story will progress, starts to question her own membership in the church.

John Dehlin [00:04:44] You're now serving at the highest, some of the highest levels of the church. And we're going to be focusing today for this part three on your interactions with at least two general authorities, which basically represents, you know, the top 90 leaders within the entire trillion dollar. At this point, Mormon Corporation. You're going to be interacting with some of the top 90 leaders in the church, trying to get answers to your issues and your questions, but also try and push them towards change. And let's. So that's what part three is going to be about. How does that sound?

Evan Smith [00:05:23] Sounds, yeah. That's a pretty good summary.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] Are you ready for it?

Evan Smith [00:05:27] I hope so. I hope so.

John Dehlin [00:05:28] Gerardo, do you want to add.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:30] No, I think that was a great intro.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] Let's jump in.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:33] Yeah.

Evan Called to the Stake Presidency

John Dehlin [00:05:33] All right. So, Wes, I mean, sorry, Evan, where do you want to take us now?

Evan Smith [00:05:37] So I guess we'll start when I was called into the Stake Presidency. So I had actually, when Wes went on his mission, I'd been released as bishop. I was released as bishop in 2016, and Wes went on his mission in 2017. So I'd had almost a year off from being a church leader. I had been an early morning seminary teacher for a few weeks at the point when I got called into the Stake Presidency. And that was about a month after

Weston Smith [00:06:03] you left on Your mission?

Evan Smith [00:06:04] I think I got called into the stake presidency.

Weston Smith [00:06:06] Yeah, sounds about right.

Evan Smith [00:06:08] So the way that getting called into a stake presidency works, the process is interesting. They have all of the high councilors in the stakes. So that's about 12 men from the area stake presidency. And all of the currently serving bishops and branch presidents all come and whoever else the stake president wants to. Whatever other men in the stake president feels are possible candidates to be stake president.

Evan Smith [00:06:37] They come to the church building early in the morning to meet with a general authority. And the general authority is usually accompanied by an area authority companion. Area authority is one level down from a general authority in the church hierarchy.

Evan Smith [00:06:55] And I was asked to come and interview because I had been a former bishop. So the stake president at the time felt like I would be a good candidate to come and be interviewed as potentially being the new stake president. Because our stake was going through reorganization. They were actually forming a new stake, and so a whole new stake presidency was being called.

Evan Smith [00:07:19] So I got asked to come and interview, and morning interview went well. Didn't think I'd get called back. Wasn't hoping to get called back in the afternoon as a finalist, I guess you could say, for the stake presidency position. But I did get a phone call. I remember I was in my room when the call came, and I was. Cheryl and I both kind of looked at each other with kind of deer in the headlights. Looks like, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? Because we know that once you get the call back, you're at least going to be a counselor in the stake presidency, if not the stake president.

Evan Smith [00:07:53] And, you know, we had just been through a lot of hard times, serving as branch president and then bishop and then trying to have everything just work from a perspective of believing, but trying to do what was healthy and right for our kids and for Wes and being progressive and trying to bring about change in the church.

Evan Smith [00:08:14] As I was serving as bishop, trying to focus on love so much and all those things. And it kind of had felt nice for almost a year to not have any of that pressure and to just kind of focus on each other more.

Evan Smith [00:08:26] But when the phone call came for me to go back to the Stake center for the second interview in the afternoon, I looked at Cheryl and I said, this is a good opportunity for us to continue to try to bring about change in the church, because only, unfortunately, I think I said this before, the way it works in Mormonism, members listen to people in leadership positions more than they do other people. And so I thought, if I can Be in a leadership position and try to emphasize love and just more inclusion and acceptance generally, then that would be a good thing. So Cheryl was supportive?

Evan Smith [00:09:03] I was. She was nervous and reluctantly supportive, but she was still supportive. I went to the stake center, half hour away, and got interviewed by Elder Anthony D. Perkins, who's a general authority. He'd been a general authority for quite some time.

Evan Smith [00:09:19] He interviewed me first, and then he interviewed Cheryl during the interview. I mean, it was the typical kind of worthiness interview. He wants to make sure that you're worthy to serve. Asked if I looked at born if I was the same in public as I am in private, it asked Cheryl those same things that she thought she thought I was worthy.

Evan Smith [00:09:41] Asked if we fought. We said, sometimes we do. We're passionate, we love each other, so sometimes we have disagreements and then we work things out. He actually, in that interview, it was interesting. He spent a lot of time talking to us after he assessed that I was worthy and he extended the calling.

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:58] What was the first interview about?

Evan Smith [00:10:01] In the morning?

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:02] Yeah. Was it with him, too?

Evan Smith [00:10:03] Yeah, it was with him and the area authority together.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:05] How was it different?

Evan Smith [00:10:07] So that interview is both of them together, just with me alone, not with Cheryl. Right. And they just are kind of like asking questions to test what the person being interviewed, what their ideas are for the stake, what they think the stake needs to be, has an emphasis on. That's interesting. They also ask you in that interview. They ask everybody in that interview, all of the high council members and the bishops and whatever other kind of former bishop like me, who might be invited to come to. They ask every man for three names of who they thought would be a good stake president. So that's kind of the first one. I don't know if it's the names that narrows it down for round two or the naming process, but I think. Or the answers that people give or whatever. But yeah, that's.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:52] Isn't that interesting because you're being interviewed for the position and then they ask you who's the best one. I. I always wonder if someone says, well, me, probably not. Right.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] Oh, yeah.

Evan Smith [00:11:03] I think if you put yourself down, if you write your name, if you give yourself, I think that's a surefire way to not get the position. But, yeah, it is an interesting process for sure. And I can understand, I mean, you have someone, a general authority coming from Salt Lake who doesn't know anybody in the area, really trying to make a decision of who to call as the leader of the stake. They kind of need to rely A lot on those names that are, that are given to them and the advice that they're hearing from the local people on the ground. They like to talk about it as a pure revelation thing, but it's. I think there's a lot of reliance on the others.

John Dehlin [00:11:37] Yeah, yeah. Some people know that. When I worked at church headquarters for a year around 1997, I was in charge of helping program a general authority candidate tracking system. And they had former stake presidents, former mission presidents, former temple, Temple presidents in there. And they track all this stuff like mental health, mental health of spouse, you know, financial situation, children, any potential problems within the family, who, you know, like all that stuff is tracked very meticulously in a. In a database.

Evan Smith [00:12:15] Yeah, it still is as of 2017 when I was called, because I remember we had to fill out a separate sheet when I actually got called after the interview and setting apart and everything, we filled out an information sheet. A lot of that stuff on there,

John Dehlin [00:12:27] it gets put in a database.

Evan Smith [00:12:28] Yeah, it's very. I was, I was surprised. There's a lot of information they were asking about me and the family and their kids and stuff like that.

Weston Smith [00:12:35] So.

John Dehlin [00:12:36] So I can. By this time you're a nuanced but still believing Mormon, is that right?

Evan Smith [00:12:42] That definitely nuanced in the sense that I thought the church was wrong on gay marriage, thought the church was wrong on women not having the priesthood. I thought that the blacks in the priesthood ban, the ban on the racial priesthood ban was a complete racist mistake, but still believed that the Book of Mormon was the word of God and that there was some literal historicity to the Book of Mormon and historicity to the Bible. Um, so I was very kind of nuanced and progressive. Didn't think the Book of Mormon had to be 100% correct. I thought Joseph could have brought it about with some mistakes in it, but that it was still, you know, scripture and, and true. So, yeah, that's where I was cool.

John Dehlin [00:13:30] Did you feel like you had to nuance your answers to his questions to be viewed as acceptable as a candidate? In other words, you know, you're different than probably what they are looking for. Maybe, maybe not. And you know that if you give fully honest, open, candid answers, maybe you might be disqualified, but you want the job because you want to make a positive influence or was it just straightforward for you still?

Evan Smith [00:14:00] Yeah, I don't know if I'd say I want the job if I got the job. I think I was excited about the positive influence, but I don't feel like I Had to. Had to change any of the answers. With Elder Perkins, he came across as, I don't know if I'd say progressive, but very kind of just open minded. And he asked questions in the interview that were focused on. On what they should be. Right. He didn't. Didn't ask any of my positions on those controversial topics. He just said, you know, how do you. How do you feel about the Savior? And how do you feel about, you know, what the stake needs to do?

Evan Smith [00:14:33] And he was very appropriate in his interviewing. He talked a lot to us, interestingly, about change in the church and how it comes about that it gets debated for decades amongst the general authorities and that the prophet is the one who decides when the time is right to actually make it happen.

Evan Smith [00:14:51] And it was interesting because I asked other members of the stake presidency afterwards if he talked about change in the church with them, and they said, no, he didn't talk about that at all. And then Cheryl expressed concern about us serving in the calling because she didn't want us to be judged as a family. Because, you know, Wes had just barely told our state, our former state president before, a month before, when he left on his mission, that he was gay. And so she didn't know where that was going to go, if Wes was going to come home early or what was going to happen.

Evan Smith [00:15:21] And so she just. We didn't say anything about Wes being gay in the interview, but she was concerned that we would have kind of a spotlight on our family and that we'd be judged. And Elder Perkins just said, you don't need to worry about that. One of the reasons you're being called is because of your family, because of the kids you've raised and what you've done as a mom. That's one of the reasons why Evan's being called. So he was cool. I actually really liked Elder Perkins. He was a good guy.

John Dehlin [00:15:44] That's got to feel validating, like Bishop is kind of validating. Stake presidency has got to feel really validating.

Evan Smith [00:15:52] Yeah, I guess.

Weston Smith [00:15:53] Yeah, it does. I'll.

Evan Smith [00:15:54] I'll be honest. It does. It feels like you are doing things correctly. So, yeah. Yeah. I actually. I actually felt. Now you say that, John. I actually felt like it was validating. Not of being more like. In the sense that my progressive Mormonism was okay. That's what was valid. That was mostly what I was feeling so much for.

Weston Smith [00:16:16] Like the promotion, right?

Evan Smith [00:16:17] Not like, oh, I got a promotion. I'm a good soldier. But I was like, hey, God's okay with me believing this because look at this. I'm getting this calling. Like it's okay to be approaching the gospel the way that I was. Yeah, that was validating.

John Dehlin [00:16:33] All right, well, so what was your time in the stake presidency like?

Evan Smith [00:16:40] It was, it was good, actually. I had a great stake president. He was a really good guy. Oh, I should, I should mention too, one of the things Elder Perkins said in our training to us as a stake presidency was that we could talk to our wives about everything and get their counsel on everything going on in the stake, including callings and stuff that people say to us and stuff like that. So that was really interesting to me. That's not something you normally hear. You think that bishops and stake presidents and stuff are supposed to keep everything totally to themselves and that they're not sharing things with their wives and things like that. But he was like, look, this is a family thing and you should be getting the input of the women in your lives. So that was really good. Ella Perkins, again, he was a good one.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] Do you happen to remember his background?

Evan Smith [00:17:21] I think he was in consulting, if I remember right. He actually asked me in my interview, how are you going to balance being partnered at a big law firm while you're also being in the state presidency? And I said, well, how did you balance doing consulting while you were doing your church callings and everything else? So, yeah, he kind of laughed when I threw that back at him a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] It's probably management consulting, something like that. And there's kind of this law, like finance, management consulting, hedge funds, kind of stuff like, and then sometimes medical doctors. But like once, once you're back east, or like elite faculty at major universities, once you're back east, these are kind of really high octane. I'm not, I'm not trying to flatter you and I'm not asking you to include yourself in this, in this description, but it's kind of like super hot, high octane individuals, especially in the Boston area, D.C. area, north New York area. It's, it's kind of starting to be higher stakes a little bit.

Evan Smith [00:18:23] Yeah. And he, I think he was asking from that perspective, I'm not going to like. But he, he was actually in Asia for a lot of his career, so it was interesting to have him ask me that when he seemed to have a more involved career than, than what I was. But yeah, yeah, the stake presidency position was good. We had a real focus on the youth as a stake. The stake president was really able to connect with the youth in a way that was pretty amazing.

Evan Smith [00:18:51] We had A stake youth fireside, where our wives. We all sat there and just took kind of anonymous questions from the youth during that inter. During that fireside. One of the questions was about gay members of the church and how they can find a place in the church when they're. When they're asked to not ever have a spouse and to just, you know, not. How can they fully serve in the church when there's all these callings that are, they can't have because they can't be bishops if they're not married, things like that. It was interesting question, and it was interesting to hear the different answers that we gave as a stake presidency.

Evan Smith [00:19:21] I had actually reviewed that question, and even though it was anonymous, we got the questions in advance. I had reviewed it and kind of prepared an answer, and the stake president was cool, and he said, hey, you answer it. Because he knew I had told him that Wes was gay. I said, hey, I have a. You know, I didn't know the stake president before he called me, and I just wanted him to be aware of the possibility that Wes might come home early. So I told him about Wes, and he was very supportive and just said, evan, you take this question. So I answered it for all the stake youth and their parents there and just said, you know, I don't know, but I know we need to be more loving of LGBTQ people.

Evan Smith [00:19:57] I explained how the church now teaches that it wasn't. It's not a choice to be gay. That was a change from before. And I taught that whatever path members of the church choose who are lgbtq, we need to honor them and support them and love them.

Evan Smith [00:20:13] So it was a great opportunity to feel like I was doing some good when Wes came home from his mission, actually. So this was two years later. I served in the stake presidency from 2017 to 2019. Wes came home in May of 2019, and a week after he came home, there was a state conference, and I gave a talk in the general session of that state conference on Sunday morning about loving and not judging people who are having doubts about the church and about how people who leave the church, we shouldn't look badly on them and about how we need to just be more kind and loving in general.

Evan Smith [00:20:46] And I specifically talked about LGBTQ members of the church and about how people are leaving the church a lot because of LGBTQ issues and how we just need to be more loving and supportive than we are. I had a lot of members of the state come up after that talk and talk to me about how much they appreciated that so in other meetings throughout those two years, I had the chance behind closed doors to correct things that sometimes people would say. Sometimes people would say homophobic remarks. I'd be like, eh, I don't know about that. You know, I'd correct some things. I remember Ed Smart came out while I was serving. Somebody said something at girls camp.

John Dehlin [00:21:20] Elizabeth Smart's dad.

Evan Smith [00:21:21] Yeah. Elizabeth Smart came out as gay when I. Yeah. And someone said something when I was at a girls camp, and I kind of said, well, you know, you don't. He was doing what he thought was, you know, was right. Like, can't judge him for getting a divorce. He's been gay for decades now in this marriage.

Evan Smith [00:21:37] And can you just imagine what it would have been like if being in a gay marriage was acceptable socially at that time? Like, maybe he wouldn't be getting a divorce now. Maybe he would have found somebody that he, you know, fall in love with back then.

Evan Smith [00:21:49] And I think a lot of. I had a lot of. I got people who heard that look at me like, what's President Smith saying? But I had opportunities to do a little bit of this and that here and there in the calling. And it felt good. It felt good to be serving that way and to focus on the youth like we did was really, really fun. It was cool. I took them out on my boat a lot, did a lot of good social things with the youth. And it was a cool calling.

John Dehlin [00:22:14] Yeah. Like, if you think about how turbulent the 19, the 2000 teens were with the gospel, with all the Internet stuff, with ordained women, with the LGBT stuff, Prop 8, the gospel topics, essays, a lot of Internet turbulence for the church to start calling progressive and even LGBT affirming men into bishoprics or stake presidencies or even stake high councils was. It was and probably is a really big deal.

John Dehlin [00:22:55] I have a friend who, like, lost his faith, told his bishop or stake president, and then he got called into a bishopric. He's like, dude, I don't believe. And he's like, yeah, that's why we want you in the bishopric. Like, we want. There are people like you all throughout the ward and you're going to be able to help them. Like, there's been a conscious part of the church to incorporate leadership with more progressive leaders at times. I'm not saying church wide, but, like, it must have just been amazing for your wardens, wards and stakes.

John Dehlin [00:23:31] Think about the LGBT kids that knew you were there. Right, like, or the parents that, you know that. I mean, we don't always, like, give the church kudos but like, kudos for that.

Weston Smith [00:23:44] Yeah. I think in our area especially, it was pretty needed, I would say.

Evan Smith [00:23:48] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:23:48] Like it's. I don't know when you're out east. And also I will say, like in Canada too, it's just, it's not even a question whether or not gay people are accepted, like legally.

John Dehlin [00:23:59] Yeah.

Weston Smith [00:24:01] You know, obviously, personally, everyone has their own different encounters with it, but like, to have society be so misaligned with, with the church out there is, Is really jarring for people who grew up there, like, like me, who see, know, pride flags in every teacher's window at school because, you know, it's part of non discrimination laws and whatnot. And. Yeah. And so, I don't know, I think the church really needed people like my dad.

John Dehlin [00:24:31] So you're saying it was almost like an existential threat, like if they don't call progressive leadership in these more progressive, liberal areas.

Weston Smith [00:24:39] Well, I know, like, I know our seminary class had a couple of revolts against when they switched from one teacher to another because the teacher started teaching stuff about trans kids. And some of the kids are like, nope, that's wrong. And you're gonna either take that back or we're gonna. We all just. I think some of them just walked out.

Evan Smith [00:24:57] They did. I was actually, so. I was first presidency and the first counselor in the state presidency over the seminary program in the stake at that time. When that happened and I got a call and I called the stake president, I said, hey, can I go talk to this teacher? And I went and talked to the teacher and I said, hey, well, your teaching's wrong. You can't do that. So that was, that was good to be able to feel like I was helping in some way, but it also extremely frustrating because it's all just local. You still have messages coming from the general church.

Gerardo Sumano [00:25:27] This just reminded me that I have some good friends, that they got married and they're in a gay relationship. Before they got married, they went and visited one of those parents ward, where he grew up in Boston, where the stake president is Elder Holland's son. And he came. He was there that Sunday and he came down.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] I'm thinking it's David Holland, probably.

Weston Smith [00:25:56] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:25:56] So he came down and congratulated them for being engaged.

Weston Smith [00:26:01] So Elder Holland's grandson was actually on my mission and was my AP for a while too. So it's the same.

Evan Smith [00:26:09] Yeah, yeah. There's an LGBTQ Sunday school class in his stake. There was, at least when I was there.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] Yeah. Like, yeah, we could talk about this later, but the church is needing to, like, hold down the conservative orthodox guard and maintain its homophobic stances. But still, in these liberal, progressive fringe areas, have lots of outreach and lots of firesides and lots of progressive bishops and stake presidency members just to keep. Kind of keep the wheels on the wagon. What a hard job to straddle all that, right?

Evan Smith [00:26:44] Yeah, yeah, it was hard. And it was also hard because Wes was on his mission. I was worried about him. Right. Worried about him down in Brazil the whole time. I found a study, 2017. I mentioned it before Brian Simmons, about PTSD from. From gay church members, just from church teachings. And that kind of floored me when I saw that. I also bumped across Bryce Cook's amazing essay. It's MormonLGBTQuestions.com and that's just like. Almost like a less person who wrote the essay right before 1978 that influenced President Kimball to change the policy. I think it was less. Anyway, that essay was. It's an amazing, amazing essay. People should go check it out. But those things kind of helped me still. Even though I was serving in this calling, feeling like I was doing some good, I kept Bryce Cook. Bryce Cook? Yeah, he's. He's great.

John Dehlin [00:27:38] Bryce Cook called what Mormon.

Evan Smith [00:27:41] LGBTQuestions.com he's in Arizona, right? Yeah, he's in Arizona. He heads up all group down there for. He's also LGBTQ members. Yeah, he's awesome. But anyway, I don't. I kept my mind, my nose in the. The kind of topic of studying all these things that were coming out all the time on. On the LGBTQ issue.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] Oh, it's Lester Bush. Lester Bush, who wrote that Article 73 in Dialogue.

Evan Smith [00:28:07] Right, right. And Bryce said he was writing that essay in the same spirit, Right. Of showing how the church could change his doctrine without violating any of its core existing tenants and it could get there on the race and the priesthood issue. And Bryce was saying, hey, this is the same situation with the LGBTQ issue. We can get there. And I took a lot of inspiration from that essay.

Evan Smith [00:28:32] About a year into the calling, home teaching was changed to ministering. About year and a half or year and a half into the calling, two hour church happened. Instead of three hour church, we had a general or a state conference in October of 2018, and Elder Paul H. Sinclair presided at that. He was the general authority.

Evan Smith [00:28:58] It was interesting. It was a good state conference. I talked again, kind of a little bit about how change in the church happens. That was one of the comments I made in one of my talks and how the only Thing that's constant in the church is change. I said that over the pulpit. I said, you know, we got like, God. People say God doesn't change. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And the way he does that is by always giving us what we need at the time we need it in our lives. And that's always going to be different for us personally. And also as a global church, sometimes the circumstances in the world are different.

Evan Smith [00:29:26] And so God's going to change the way he approaches the church. And that policies will change, sometimes doctrine will change, things like that. I didn't say it quite as bluntly as that. I tried to walk the fine line a little better.

John Dehlin [00:29:36] But let me ask you about one thing.

Evan Smith [00:29:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] So the November 15th policy was instituted by Thomas S. Monson, his administration.

Gerardo Sumano [00:29:48] Right.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] And I think it was also reversed during Thomas S. Monson's. It was reversed during.

Evan Smith [00:29:54] Reverse during Nelson.

John Dehlin [00:29:55] Okay. But it was Nelson who doubled down and claimed that the. Yeah. The November 15th policy was revelation. And so I guess it was Nelson's. It was Monson's death and Nelson's ascent to profit, along with Oakes replace Elder Oaks replacing Uchtdorf as first counsel as counselor in the First Presidency. I wonder, you know, that was the impetus to the two hour. You know, the reduction of church from three hours to two hours on Sunday, the ministering program, the reversal of the policy that Nelson himself has said was doctrine. I wonder if that was kind of exciting or a confusing time to see all these exciting new changes, to know that Oaks was now more powerful, that Nelson was more powerful, but that Monson was gone. Like, I wonder how you processed all that.

Evan Smith [00:30:57] Yeah, it's interesting, especially since Nelson had

John Dehlin [00:31:01] been kind of a homie a little bit.

Weston Smith [00:31:04] Yeah. I don't know.

Evan Smith [00:31:04] He was a homie. He did come to my. He did come to. Yeah. Like I said, I grew up in a ward, met him several times growing up. But he. He did attend my dad's viewing. He came to my dad's viewing when he passed. But I mean, I'm in 2018 still here in what I'm telling. But the reversal happened in 2019, shortly before Wes came home from his mission. And I was happy about it. It was interesting as a stake presidency. We talked about it, and there was a lot of discussion of how policy can change but doctrine can't. And I was kind of like, doctrine changes too, but I didn't, you know, can't.

Evan Smith [00:31:36] You can't say things too loudly. So it was exciting to see that reversal happen. Yeah. I was excited that that happened. But, you know, in just several months before then, this. This Elder Sinclair in our private post State conference meeting had told us that it was ironic that he said, I don't think change will happen on LGBTQ issues. And I don't know if he was saying that in response to what I had mentioned in my talk that I had given about how change is always happening.

Evan Smith [00:32:05] He said, that won't change. And I actually cried when he said that. I think he noticed I cried. But then he said he does think that one change that will happen is that more women will speak in General Conference. So I thought that was interesting. But then it was just a few months later that the November 20th that

Gerardo Sumano [00:32:20] that policy got reversed, which hasn't happened. Women actually have spoken less.

Evan Smith [00:32:24] I know, I know.

Weston Smith [00:32:25] I'm kind of laughing because I'm like, the bar is so low. Ooh, more women in General Conference. It's like, well, there was a time

John Dehlin [00:32:35] after ordained women where they were trying to let women pray in General Conference, which was a newer thing, relatively newer. They were trying to let women talk more. They're having them seat up on the stand.

Gerardo Sumano [00:32:48] The Women's conference, I think started create. Was created during that time.

John Dehlin [00:32:52] So, I mean, they were trying to ramp up the women thing a little bit.

Evan Smith [00:32:56] They were trying. They were trying. What is it like, just recently they. They had no Saturday night session at all. Then they reinstated it and like, they kept going back and forth, like from one conference to the next. And I think they're really having a hard time figuring out how to make it all work.

Gerardo Sumano [00:33:09] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:33:10] But I did think it was very interesting that Elder Sinclair said there won't be any change in LGBTQ issues in October 2018. And then in April, April 2019, they reversed the policy of exclusion. I was like, wow, that's.

Weston Smith [00:33:22] I mean, that's changed.

Evan Smith [00:33:23] It's definitely changed. That's a big change. So, yeah, it was interesting.

Gerardo Sumano [00:33:29] Were you seeing all these changes as damage control? Were you seeing the numbers in the stake decline at all?

John Dehlin [00:33:36] Or is modern day revelation like New prophet, new Revelation?

Evan Smith [00:33:40] I wasn't necessarily seeing numbers in our. They affected by this so much. I was just. The way I spun the reversal was that they just got it wrong in the first instance. So this was a correction.

Weston Smith [00:33:51] Right.

Evan Smith [00:33:52] And I didn't really. I didn't accept that it was revelation before, even though president also, again, you got to remember my position on what doctrine was, was it had to be canonized to actually really be binding on me. So all the other stuff that I heard and the changes in the policy, I was just like, okay, well, that's what they're thinking now. But whatever, you know, I just carried on without getting it too into my soul. So, yeah, yeah, let's see. So Wes comes home in May 2019, then in June 2019, I kind of had a faith. Not kind of. I had a full blown faith crisis.

Faith Crisis, CES Letter, and Family Doubts

John Dehlin [00:34:26] While you're in a state presidency.

Evan Smith [00:34:28] While I'm in a state presidency, yeah. My other son, Owen, he's two years younger than Wes, had been admitted to byu and he was about to be ordained an elder. He really struggled with LGBTQ issues and with women's issues in the church. He was in our YSA branch and I talked to him a ton about it. And I got him to the point where he was able to give a talk in the YSA branch about how.

Evan Smith [00:34:54] And YSA is young, single adult, by the way, sorry for any never Mormon listeners. He gave a talk on Church on Sunday about how waiting for change in the church is like waiting for rain. And if you just stare up at the sky and wait, it seems like it's forever. Incoming. But if you just go about doing your thing all the time and serving in the church and doing what God wants you to do, then the rain will come and the change will happen sooner than you think. Right? I mean, he was drinking my Kool Aid and was ready to go to byu, but I could see that he was torn up.

Evan Smith [00:35:26] I knew him well enough that I was like, okay, he's doing this for me. He's being ordained an elder and he's going to BYU despite his doubts because of me. And I was one night had a dream about being this authoritative, mean jerk of a dad, and I woke up really just panicky at like 3am, didn't know what to do. Had this really, really strong prompting, like, as strong as I felt it for any other promptings that I'd had in my life in the church that I needed to study how Joseph Smith could have written the Book of Mormon, like, not translated it from God.

Evan Smith [00:36:05] Could he have made it up? And up until that point, I had studied a lot of doctrinal issues and a lot of all the stuff I had studied was, you know, the CES letter was like old news to me. I had read it and digested it. Wes is smiling. He read it before his mission.

Weston Smith [00:36:21] I had always been looking for, for a reason to kind of like get out of the church as a teenager, because I didn't really believe it, but it was playing Such a vital social role for me and, like, making me feel like I was accepted by my parents and by my peers. That when I found the CES letter, I was like, oh, surely this is the smoking gun that let, like, my. There's no way that they've seen this before. And I brought it to my dad. He's like, oh, so you finally found this? I was like, what do you mean, finally found this? He's like, okay, let's sit. We're going to talk about this for a while and go through why, like, all the fair Mormon stuff. And.

Evan Smith [00:36:53] Yeah, yeah, I had found the apologetic answers to a lot of that stuff.

Weston Smith [00:37:00] And

Evan Smith [00:37:02] didn't, you know, they didn't know. They weren't perfect answers to me, but I was like, it doesn't have to be perfect. As long as there's an answer, it doesn't have to be the best answer. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:37:11] Elder Oaks has a talk to Cesar Teachers, I think, I believe, saying that exact same thing. We don't have to come up with good answers. We just have to have an answer.

Evan Smith [00:37:22] An answer. I remember. Yeah, I remember that talk. Yeah. Yeah. So he was talking about you. Yeah. I don't know. But, you know, I had given, as a bishop, I'd given a Fireside to the youth on the gospel topic essays. I did that. I said, hey, we got to talk about these things. We got to inoculate these youth. And so I. I wasn't surprised by any of these issues, but my foundational core of my testimony was the Book of Mormon. I was like, that is if that's true and none of this other stuff matters. Right. If that's true, the church is true, and all the other stuff is just us being humans trying to figure out and messing things up along the way.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] So, like, every bishop, every stake president everywhere almost might have that thought of, huh. I wonder if the Book of Mormon is really true. But that's the last time and place you want to be actually diving in and going down that rabbit hole. What do you think allowed you to dive down that Book of Mormon rabbit hole? Whereas most bishopric members of stake president members are going to run as far away from that as they possibly could.

Evan Smith [00:38:23] Yeah, I just. I felt like I was harming my family. I was really freaked out and worried that I was forcing my family to do things that they didn't want to do, and it made it worse. Like, what I. What really it was was I knew what Wes went through on his mission and the hell he went through and the trauma he experienced. And then I saw Owen struggling and I was like, well, wait, Owen's straight. Okay? He's a straight white male. Church can work for him. But he was still struggling too. And so I was like, am I doing this to Owen too?

Evan Smith [00:38:50] Do I want to mess this up again with another son? And what about my daughters? I know they really had a hard time with women's decision in the church. Like, what am I doing to them? If I'm progressively nuancing all my family to stay in the church, which I was doing, are they really best off? What am I doing to my family? Was really what made me decide to go down the rabbit hole.

John Dehlin [00:39:12] And was Cheryl doubting when you started studying the CS letter and book of Book of Mormon? Was Cheryl doubting yet or not yet?

Evan Smith [00:39:18] She was, Interestingly, In April of 2019, her temple recommend was set to expire. And this was, you know, a month before Wes came home from his mission. And she said, I don't want to renew it because she. She didn't believe anymore. She was like, basically just supporting me in the calling because she thought it was something I enjoyed, which I did. And she thought that she was supporting a hobby, that any good spouse would support someone in the hobby. But the problem is that supporting me like that meant that she also had to publicly portray an image. Right.

Evan Smith [00:39:54] I mean, she spoke in state conference when we asked our wives to speak because we wanted to have more women speakers and things like that. We're trying to be progressive. Right. And so Cheryl did what she needed to do to try to support me publicly. But she was like, temple recommend with Wes being how he was on his mission, about to come home and struggling so much, he's like, I can't do it. I just can't do it. And so that raised the question of whether I could continue in my calling if I have a spouse who doesn't have a temple recommend. Can you still be in the stake presidency?

John Dehlin [00:40:22] Yeah, because it's a Mormon. It's the wife of a Mormon leader's job to be spiritual. Arm candy, like, you know, trophy spiritual, trophy wife spiritual, you know, arm candy. She's just there to make you look like your family's doing what they should be doing. So for a woman to kind of go step off the train or to go off script is a non trivial thing, especially when your husband is in a stake presidency. That's a scary, bold move.

Evan Smith [00:40:55] Yeah, it was very bold.

John Dehlin [00:40:56] Cheryl.

Evan Smith [00:40:57] Good for her. I love her for it. Yeah, she. And it got to the point where the stake president had to Reach out to the area authority and ask the question, you know, if Evan's wife doesn't renew, he didn't use my name. He said, if a counselor doesn't. Counselor doesn't. Has a wife who doesn't renew me. Recommend they continue to serve. And the answer from the area authority was, if the wife is having doubts that look like they're temporary, then the counselor can continue to serve until she gets over her doubts and gets her renewal done.

Evan Smith [00:41:35] But if the doubts are going to be more permanent and she's not going to have a recommend for a long time, then the counselor should probably be released. And so two weeks later, after a lot of discussion and. And I was telling Cheryl, look, I will get released. Please let me get released. And I told her this many times as a bishop, too. I said, look, I'll ask to be released. And she said, no, because then I'll feel like a failure as a wife. I'm not supporting you in something you want to do. It's like this vicious circle where I want to be there for her, but she wants to be there for me.

Evan Smith [00:42:05] And we both can't do it at the same. We can't make each other happy because we feel like we're going to disappoint each other either way. It's like a, you know, prisoner dilemma. We just can't. We can't solve it. And finally she just said, I'll just renew it. Like, we talked about how she could nuance her way through the whole recommend interview questions, you know, that sustaining what it sustaining could mean that you just don't publicly criticize it doesn't mean you have to agree that, you know, for tithing, you know, she doesn't want to be paying.

Evan Smith [00:42:38] We don't have to be paying necessarily tithing to church. We can pay it to good causes. We can. You know, she can do that with any money.

Weston Smith [00:42:44] She.

Evan Smith [00:42:44] So we nuanced it a lot, even belief in God and Jesus, like, we nuanced a bunch. And she made it through temple recommend interview, which she hated, she didn't like. She's like, I can't. I don't want to do. But I'll do it. Because I know you feel like you're doing good, Evan. You're helping the church change. So I'll do it for you.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] So, yeah, I don't think the church really like one of the saddest people I've ever met. One of the most sad stories I've ever met was when I met a woman who was just having her feminist awakening while her husband had been called as bishop over her, and she was almost suicidal, like going to the bathroom during sacrament meeting to throw up kind of thing. Like, I don't think, like, from the church's standpoint, there's a degree to which we're all just like, oh, good job for putting progressives in there to lead, because it's a breath of fresh air and it creates a bigger tent for all the other members. Although we acknowledge that maybe it's just out of self preservation. But I don't think the church leaders probably realize how stressful that is for a mixed faith family to be put in high levels of leadership.

Evan Smith [00:44:01] For sure. Very stressful. And so, yeah, I was dealing with April 2019 that happened was, sure, you represent the church. You do.

John Dehlin [00:44:09] And all the things your other family members are like, hate. Starting to hate.

Evan Smith [00:44:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:14] You know what I mean?

Evan Smith [00:44:15] I would have conversations with my family when I was bishop and in the sick presidency where, because I. I was just one minor example, I was nuanced enough where I was like, it's a stupid thing that people don't watch rated our movies because they think the church. That's like a commandment. That's dumb. It's not a commandment.

Weston Smith [00:44:29] He's a big movie buff. I think that might have been a little bit selfish.

Evan Smith [00:44:32] Yeah, he was kind of selfish. But I was like, look, it's dumb. It's not a commandment. It's just this random comment that Benson made. It's not binding doctrine. It's silly.

Weston Smith [00:44:39] Right?

Evan Smith [00:44:41] But I told my family, I said, you don't need to tell people that we watch radar movies because that's gonna cause me drama as a church leader. I'm gonna get criticized. I'm gonna get flack, blah, blah, blah. So I wasn't trying to be deceptive, but I was just telling my family, look, there's some stuff that we just keep private because it just doesn't need to be out there and it causes me problems if you talk about it.

Weston Smith [00:45:00] Or I think the other thing you told us this about was, like, wearing our Sunday clothes all day long. Because I know that's a big. That was a big thing in our award is like, some families.

Evan Smith [00:45:07] Some families did that.

Weston Smith [00:45:08] Yeah, some families did that and some families didn't. And we're like, oh, well, the bishop's family doesn't do it. So you guys are less righteous. I'm like, yeah, sorry, I put on a T shirt.

Evan Smith [00:45:17] I guess I was like, guys don't tell. I told my Kids don't tell people that you don't wear your church clothes. It just doesn't matter. Just don't give me, don't, don't make my calling harder than it has to be. Just keep some things private.

Evan Smith [00:45:28] But yeah, I mean, having to have that kind of publicly facing thing is pressure for sure. And I guess to go back to the question, John, of what prompted me to go down the rabbit hole. April 2019, Cheryl's temple recommend issue. May 2019, Wes comes home early from his mission. June 2019, Owen's wanting to, he's about to be ordained an elder and everyone's just like hating it. And I'm thinking, what am I doing to my family? Right. And that's why I woke up in the middle of the night, just panicked. And I spent the next 20 hours straight on the Internet just figuring out how Joseph Smith might have written the Book of Mormon.

Evan Smith [00:46:06] And it was a rabbit hole that was really, really enlightening to me. I hadn't explored the non church friendly sources to that point. And there is a ton out there. There's a lot, a lot out there about how he, how he did it. So you say something.

Weston Smith [00:46:24] Yeah. I mean, when people say, you know, they go down a rabbit hole, I don't think they understand like what the difference is between a normal person rabbit hole and a lawyer's rabbit hole. Because I think, I don't know how many. It's got to be thousands of hours that you spent at this point where

Evan Smith [00:46:40] it's like so many.

Weston Smith [00:46:41] I don't know, I joke with all my friends that he's got like a couple PhDs in theology at this point because I mean, it wasn't just the Book of Mormon. Like after the Book of Mormon, I think he moved on to the Bible.

Evan Smith [00:46:52] Yeah, we'll get there, we'll get there. But I decided at this point that I was going to read the Book of Mormon again because I saw how. I saw from my research online that there was a real plausible way Joseph could have made it up.

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:04] Do you remember what would you have read?

Evan Smith [00:47:06] MormonThink was the first one I came across. Yeah. MormonThink.com I think.

John Dehlin [00:47:11] The classic.

Evan Smith [00:47:12] Yep, yep. And that just led me to a bunch of other places. But I, you know, started seeing that the idea that Joseph was illiterate was kind of baloney. He could write a decent letter. The idea that he was uneducated was also not really accurate. He had as much educa. He had more education than a lot of people of his day. Like they were homeschooled. Right. And he had teachers in the family and you know, his brother Hyrum went to Dartmouth for private education. And so like he was not coming from a, you know, hillbilly yokel type background. He had a lot of resources available to him that he was very proficient in the Bible, that he, you know, was a Methodist exhorter at the camp revivals and stuff.

Evan Smith [00:48:01] Like he was not this guy that just suddenly randomly had an angel give him a book that he miraculously translated. It didn't happen that way. But I still was like, okay, maybe, maybe, but it's still a pretty remarkable work.

Evan Smith [00:48:19] It's still miraculous that he was able to do this in like what, this 90 days that they say whatever that he did it. I was like, okay, so there's got to be something to this.

Weston Smith [00:48:27] Right.

Evan Smith [00:48:28] There's got to be a way that God is involved. So I said, I'm going to read the Book of Mormon again.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:33] And would you have found out that Messiah was written first?

Evan Smith [00:48:39] Not yet.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:40] Okay.

Evan Smith [00:48:40] I did not know that yet. Yeah, that's a big thing that happened a little later. That's after I started listening to Mormon stories.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:46] Yeah, if you write the middle of a book first, you know, it's easier to keep track of the story.

Evan Smith [00:48:53] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:53] Especially if you're writing the beginning at the end.

Evan Smith [00:48:56] Right, right. I mean, as far as how Joseph could have done it, practically speaking, the Mormon discussion series that you guys are doing.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] Lds. Lds.

Evan Smith [00:49:06] LDS discussions with Mike.

John Dehlin [00:49:08] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:49:08] Those are phenomenal. Those are phenomenal. Really love those. And those are all honestly based on, on, you know, the John Hamer episodes where he walks through how it could have easily practically been done by Joseph a few hours a day with his head in the hat with pre prepared materials that he had over years and years and years and dictating. It's not that miraculous. And I did find that night of 20 hours of research, the like I was a traveling to type thing that that was in the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon. There was a lot of like, you know, 19th century English that got corrected.

Evan Smith [00:49:45] So and the dictation errors I found that night, I was like, whoa, you can clearly see that he's not translating from plates. He's just dictating and using kind of circumlocution to find words that he forgot he had mentioned before and that he was kind of making around. So I found a lot of stuff that led me to believe that that was very plausible, that Joseph just made it up. So then I said, I'm going to read it. I'm going to give fair time.

Weston Smith [00:50:07] Right.

Evan Smith [00:50:07] Because I had some youth while I was bishop. I had some youth that went through some faith crisis. And I always counseled them, give the same amount of time. I didn't want to be the type of bishop, like, don't look at those materials, don't look at those resources. I just said, give the same amount of time to the critical stuff that you do to the church, family stuff. Balance it out. So that's what I decided to do. I studied the Book of Mormon and I took every verse that I read that I could possibly think was like, Joseph made that. Joseph made it up. I googled it. I spent the. The next three months, like, so many, so much time.

Weston Smith [00:50:38] Boy, your rabbit hole.

Evan Smith [00:50:39] Yeah. Telling you, just finding, like, what about this first? What about this? What about building the ship? What about, you know, all these things? Well, one of the episodes I found John Larsen's building How to build a Transoceanic. Transoceanic vessel. Holy cow.

John Dehlin [00:50:52] That thing.

Evan Smith [00:50:53] That blew my mind. I was like, wow, there's no way Nephi could have made that ship, made that boat. But anyway, I go through all that process over probably the next three months. About a month into it, the stake president. I told my stake president I was having a faith crisis. I told him I'm not sure about the Book of Mormon.

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:11] Wow.

Evan Smith [00:51:13] And he told me at the same time that he was going to be moving. So I was like, the pressure is on for me to figure out because

Gerardo Sumano [00:51:23] the general authority is going to come,

Evan Smith [00:51:24] because, yeah, in like two months, the general authority is going to come and I'm going to be interviewed for being stake president. So I gotta figure this out. So I just doubled down on reading quicker, finding it, doing a ton of research still. And my stake president gave me the book Case for the Book of Mormon by Tad Collister. He's a former general authority.

John Dehlin [00:51:48] Excellent, Excellent book.

Evan Smith [00:51:51] I thought at the time that it was. I read it and I was like, oh, yeah, this has some good points. Now looking back at it, and I've learned so much more. It's really weak apologetics. RFM Rito, Free Mormon and Bill Reel have a great episode on Mormonism Live where they dissect that book. And it's just. It's not good, it's not strong. But at the time, I was kind of grasping for anything, Right? And so I was like, okay, okay, that's fine. Good enough.

Evan Smith [00:52:17] It was about a week and a half before the state conference was where the New state president was gonna get called that. I got my answer. I was driving on the freeway. I was towards the back of the Book of Mormon. I was in Moroni. I was in the chapter about infant baptisms. And I thought, why the heck is this chapter in a book from ancient America? Why are they talking about infant baptism? There's no record that there's any infant baptisms going on. There's no record that there's any baptisms. Baptism, period, Christianity, nothing. Oh, I actually had knew from a long time.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] We're talking about like five for those who don't know. Like, this is like 500 A.D. what? Mesoamerica, you know, Mayans, Aztecs, right. What's the likelihood that they're sitting around thinking about infant baptism, like Catholic versus Protestant, right. Christian baptism.

Evan Smith [00:53:14] And that was just one of the things I had found so many other things. Like all of the quotes from the New Testament, paraphrased quotes from New Testament that are said by like Alma and Nephi a few hundred years before Jesus. There's hundreds of them. They're all over. And I came across Deutero Isaiah, right? That was a big one for me. I was like, how in the world did the parts of Isaiah that biblical scholars now say were not written by Isaiah but were written later? They could not have been on the brass plates that Lehi and his family brought 600 years before Christ to the American continent, and they hadn't been written yet.

Evan Smith [00:53:52] How are they there? And then how was the Sermon on the Mount? Like, that was just compiled from biblical. From some other sources from a bunch of different collected quotes that are attributed to Jesus? How does he give the exact same speech there when that speech wasn't even written down or those sayings collected into a sermon until like 100 AD or whenever it was that. That mark was that Matthew was written? How can you. I. So I found a lot of those things along the way.

John Dehlin [00:54:24] And basically the LDS discussion series or CES letter. Mormon think.

Evan Smith [00:54:29] Yeah, just the rabbit hole, right?

Gerardo Sumano [00:54:31] But.

Evan Smith [00:54:31] But the. The rat. So the CES letter, I had. I had read it, right? But I had not spent a ton of time on it because I was like, oh, I just spent more of my time on Fairmormon. I read. But I was like, I'm just gonna. The things that I'm debating and worrying about. But the thing that. What I came to when I was driving was, it doesn't matter.

Evan Smith [00:54:53] Maybe Joseph, when he was translating the plates, he was aware of a Moroni was talking about a theological debate happening at the time. And Joseph didn't understand the theological debate or it wasn't pertinent to 19th century Americans or modern day people reading the Book of Mormon. And so he translated the debate, the theological ideas, the debate as a theological debate of today. So I was like taking the extension of the horse as a tapir type thing and applying it to the whole theological like topic that was being discussed in those chapters. I was like, oh, you know what, he's just, he's just channeling a different theological issue and it's the one that's most important to us anyway.

Evan Smith [00:55:36] So that's fine, that's fair. It's not that the Book of Mormon is true, it's that it's true enough, it doesn't have to be literal. It's true enough. It's fine.

Evan Confronts General Authorities About LGBTQ Policies

John Dehlin [00:55:43] Checkmate, Book of Mormon haters.

Weston Smith [00:55:45] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:55:48] And then I went to the temple. Cheryl and I both did. We had a good feeling that things work out fine in the coming state conference. And then I had the state conference happen. So we went into the state conference actually feeling like, you know what, we're good with the church. Church is fine. We can make it work, even though it's hard, but we're doing good to try to soften people's hearts and minds and we can continue on this path.

Evan Smith [00:56:13] So yeah. Then I had the experience with Elder McCune, John A. McCune, he was the general authority who was assigned to come and interview for the new stake president. And I had my morning interview again. Same sort of experience where they just kind of ask you those quick questions.

Evan Smith [00:56:32] But I came out of that interview and I called Cheryl. I said, I don't think he liked me. I got the distinct impression that I, he was not happy with me. He asked me what I thought the vision for the stake should be. I said, love, charity, and wrong answer. He seemed a little, I don't know, he just didn't seemed to like that.

Evan Smith [00:56:48] But I just didn't get the impression that he liked me. So I didn't think I was gonna, I was worried that I wasn't gonna get a callback interview later that afternoon. I was kind of mad with that idea. Cause I'd only been in the state presidency for two years. Typically it's a nine year calling.

Evan Smith [00:57:00] Yes, I was getting released because the stake president was moving. And so the counselors are automatically released when the stake president moves. But I thought, you know, it looks bad. It looks bad. Oh yeah. People would look, the whole stake would look and be like, wow, President Smith only served for two years he didn't get recalled as a counselor. Like, what the heck?

Gerardo Sumano [00:57:16] Yeah.

Evan Smith [00:57:16] And that wasn't, I wasn't so much the image I was worried about because at that point I honestly didn't really put much stock into like the image of being a leader. It was more about the idea that I couldn't continue to be progressive. I couldn't continue to do what I was doing and trying to help that

Weston Smith [00:57:33] there wasn't space for you, There wasn't space for me.

Evan Smith [00:57:35] And it pissed me off that it was probably because Wes was gay. I thought that, I thought that, you know, he. I just caught that vibe in the morning meeting that he knew. But I did get called back. Two hours after I expected to get a call, maybe an hour after I expected the call to come, I got called back and I had to drive half hour back to the Stake center and met with Elder McCune. Cheryl met with his area authority companion for five minutes to do a quick, you know, are you worthy for your husband to serve in the stake? And then she sat out in the hall with our then I think 13 year old daughter because she was with us on that Saturday and just ended up having to come back with us.

Evan Smith [00:58:17] My interview with Elder McCune lasted what was supposed to be like the quick 5 minutes, 10 minutes, are you worthy? And then he was going to call Cheryl in to extend the calling to me to at least continue to serve in the Stake Presidency as a counselor, because that's why you got a call back.

Evan Smith [00:58:33] He talked to me for over 70, for 70 minutes. And that meant that we were late to a training meeting that was starting, that we were both supposed to be in and talking in. And Cheryl was out in the hall for over an hour wondering, what the heck is Evan in the room with this general authority talking about?

Evan Smith [00:58:53] And it was all about Wes. He said to me at the very beginning of the interview, I sense that you. And this is in chapter nine of my book, I relate all of this. But he said, I know you've had some tough times recently that your son's come home from his mission and he's left the church. And I was like, well, thinking, how does he, how does he know this? But I think he actually told me that he heard from someone that day and I didn't really want to talk about it, but I could tell he did. And so we just started kind of having a debate and it lasted for a long time.

John Dehlin [00:59:29] Um, yeah, a debate.

Evan Smith [00:59:33] Yeah, it was a debate. It was very respectful. The tone was, you know, we Weren't yelling, but it was very much a substantive conceptual debate on the issue.

John Dehlin [00:59:46] Are you able to. Do you want to even characterize the nature of the sides and the positions?

Evan Smith [00:59:52] Yeah, I mean, I can tell some of the points if you want. I can go through them. I can read some of. I'll just highlight some of the things I wrote, like, about in my book. But what if you tell it as a story?

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:02] Like, this is what he told me. This.

Evan Smith [01:00:03] Yeah, that's what I'll do. So I'll just kind of look at my notes, though, because I don't want to miss anything. The first thing he kind of tried to relate to me is that I shouldn't be happy that Wes had left the church because he shouldn't be happy when anyone leaves the church. Sin is sin. It's not justified. I told him about Wes's revelatory experience and that I believed it and that I believed God was okay with him leaving. And he said, no, he didn't believe that that could have been an answer from God. Because sometimes people get answers that they want just because they want them bad enough. They'll get them for anything.

John Dehlin [01:00:33] I mean, that cuts both ways, right?

Evan Smith [01:00:34] Yeah. Yes, it does. And he said that not all gay people are unhappy in the church. That some people, some of them are celibate and stay and are happy, and some are mixed orientation marriages and are happy. And I said, statistically, that's garbage. That's like. Statistically, the vast majority of celibate members in the church have trauma, and the vast majority of people in mix orientation marriages have trauma and they don't succeed. Those marriages fail. And he said, well, it's all about.

Evan Smith [01:01:04] Life is hard and you can figure it out and you can be more stalwart. He drew an analogy to how parents might feel if their kids left the church to commit crimes. To how I might feel as my son leaving the church. Kind of like. Like that's how I should feel. I said, well, my son living in the church doesn't harm anyone. People committing crimes hurt other people. But Les just wants to love someone. He just wants to have a family and be, you know. He said, oh, well, if gay couples adopt, then they are harming people because they're harming those kids that they adopt.

Evan Smith [01:01:32] And I said, there is a ton of psychological studies and proof that shows that kids raised by gay couples, they fare really well because those gay parents are so committed to being good parents. Like, there's almost like, there's almost no area. I put this in my Book the studies here. But there's almost no area where there's so much agreement from the psychological community, from the professional organizations that gay parenting is not harmful at all to children. And it's the opposite. It's the opposite.

Weston Smith [01:02:06] And that's something that really bothered me, too. I was like, you really think that two people are going to go through all of this to get married? Like, all the homophobia, all of the nonsense that comes with, like, you know, the homophobia in the bureaucracy and beyond that, the cost of adopting and. Or, like, doing surrogacy. And you think that they're going to be bad parents after all that? They haven't put in hours and hours and hours of thought. You know, the. I don't know. It just rubbed me the wrong way compared to, like, thinking about even my own parents. It was like, they were like, my mom was 20 when she had me. She didn't know anything.

Evan Smith [01:02:48] Like, really young parents.

John Dehlin [01:02:51] I mean, they knew each other three days before they got engaged.

Evan Smith [01:02:54] Come on.

Weston Smith [01:02:56] And so I don't know. That argument has always really run me the wrong way, especially because the data is so conclusive. It's like, gay marriages are happier than straight marriages. And so maybe you guys should take a page out of our book. Figure it out.

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:12] What are you laughing at, Gerardo?

Weston Smith [01:03:17] Let's see.

Evan Smith [01:03:17] Elder McCune also said he. Like this. This took a while to get out.

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:21] Wait, wait. But you said, well, I know. The evidence points out.

Evan Smith [01:03:24] I said, the evidence points out. He says. He says, I know some studies to the contrary, so we'll just have to let that one sit.

John Dehlin [01:03:29] And of course he gave you the citation.

Evan Smith [01:03:30] No, he didn't. He just said, we'll have to agree to disagree. And I said, okay, well, whatever, Fine. Then he moved on. He said, you know, maybe it's okay. Maybe God doesn't condemn gay people who decide to leave the church because maybe it's like they have diminished agency. Almost like how a trauma victim has an instinctive reaction in certain circumstances where they're triggered and they can't control how they behave. Maybe, you know, having gay sexual orientation is the same sort of response. They can't control it.

Evan Smith [01:04:00] I'm like, I don't like that idea. I really don't. I think that's demeaning, and it's just insulting to someone who's finding love and companionship in their life to call that a trauma response or similar to that. It's just not. Agent, that is just really bad. He talked about how the church uses tithing Funds to not have people express affection on church property. I don't know why he brought that up. It seemed kind of weird that he would do that.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:26] I actually had an idea when I read that on your line. To me, it was very significant. When the November 15 policy was reversed, on the next handbook of instructions, they included this rule with this weird rule that had never been there before, that affection in. In church property could not be displayed.

Evan Smith [01:04:50] Oh, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:51] And I. I think I read someone speculating or. And I thought the same thing. They were coming up with that rule so that homosexuals wouldn't display affection in church meetings, since the church had come out and say that. Said that they were going to treat heterosexuals the same as homosexuals.

Evan Smith [01:05:10] Yeah. So you can't hold.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:11] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:05:12] Heterosexual couples hold hands in church all the time.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:14] Exactly. Or they are, like, hugging their arm

Evan Smith [01:05:17] around each other while they're sitting in the pew.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:18] Exactly.

Evan Smith [01:05:20] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:20] So that. That was kind of interesting that the church was thinking about that.

Evan Smith [01:05:24] Yeah. Because that's true. They did update the handbook to kind of say that. That it was like discussing sexual orientation was not.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:32] Oh, and that too.

Evan Smith [01:05:33] Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:33] Discussing sexual orientation could not be done. And then.

Evan Smith [01:05:36] Yeah, yeah, it's true. I didn't connect with those thoughts. That's. That's probably what he was hearing in the general authority circles, right? Was discussion about updating the handbook like that. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:45] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:05:46] He did talk a lot about how the law of chastity would not change. And this was two weeks after President Nelson gave his talk at BYU where he talked about how the law of chastity will not change. It was his first talk that he gave in response to the exclusion policy being reversed. And President Nelson at BYU was like, God, we cannot change the laws that God has set down. And I think that's probably where Elder McCune was, why he was so fixated on this idea that the law of chastity will never change. Because it was just barely been a mantra that President Nelson had been teaching. And.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:18] Yeah, sorry to interject, but the problem with that statement that Nelson gave is the way he worded it, because he said, the law of chastity has not changed.

Evan Smith [01:06:28] Yes.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:29] Because it's marriage between a man and a woman. And then it was changed on the transcript later, you know, because obviously polygamy has existed. So he hasn't been between a man and a woman. Especially. Nelson is married to two women eternally.

Evan Smith [01:06:46] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:47] Anyway, go ahead.

Evan Smith [01:06:48] No, that's. That's actually a really good point. I. I brought up polygamy. I Said, what about polygamy? The law of chastity changed before. It could change back. It could change again. Like, you know, and. And he said, oh, well, people use that line of argument. The LGBTQ opposition uses that line of argument. And I said, I don't like referring to gay people as the opposition. That doesn't feel right to me.

Weston Smith [01:07:09] I like it. It's very. I'm like, I want the Imperial March every single time I walk into church. I want the Darth Vader thing. Yeah, give it to me.

Evan Smith [01:07:23] I asked him if it was okay that I hoped for change, and this was the thing that I really wanted to get from him. I was like, look, is it okay that I hope that things can be different? And I use the analogy of the Savior in Gethsemane. I said, he's on his knees asking, heavenly Father, can this cup pass from me now you're talking about something that's so fundamental to Mormon doctrine. It's the atonement. Without the atonement, there is nothing. Right? And even for the atonement, which is so fundamental, Christ was asking, hey, can this not happen?

Evan Smith [01:07:51] So I said, is it bad that I'm just asking, hey, can gays not suffer in the church? Can change happen so that they're not suffering? And he said, you shouldn't hope for change. You should just hope that the Savior works it out after this life, works things out for people one by one after this life. And I said, well, how does that happen if here in this life they're suffering so much, and if all they had to do is look forward to the next life, that's going to cause them to want to die, to want to kill themselves, want to die by suicide. And he said that that wasn't the only outcome and that people exaggerate the suicidality.

Evan Smith [01:08:26] And it was. It was a horrible, horrible conversation, the whole thing. But ultimately, we got to the place where he was okay, extending me the calling to serve as counselor, because that's remarkable. Yeah, Well, I.

John Dehlin [01:08:39] As president or presidency member, as a

Evan Smith [01:08:42] first counselor in the presidency, again, stake presidency, same calling I had. And I said to him, or actually, we didn't go. Whether it was first or second, it was a counselor position. I don't remember what it was. Maybe I got demoted a second. I have no idea. But it was definitely a counselor calling.

Evan Smith [01:09:00] I convinced him that I wasn't going to publicly cross any lines when it came to doctrine, that I'd been. I've been doing this for years. I knew where the lines were. You could Ask anybody in the stake if I ever crossed any lines, have I ever taught anything that was not church sanctioned? And nobody would tell you I would, and I will continue to do that. I don't want to get ahead of the brethren. That's not my place. You know, I know how revelation comes to the church. It's not through up and up. You know, it comes from the top down. I get it. And he was convinced enough to where he was okay doing it.

Evan Smith [01:09:30] I honestly think that he had heard, and I know several men put my name down, most of the men put my name down as the stake presidency to be the next stake president. And the new stake president had obviously asked for me to serve.

Evan Smith [01:09:45] The new stake president had barely been a bishop for one year and got called. So I think he was looking at me as somebody who had way more experience than him, and he needed. Needed somebody. It would be nice to have somebody who already was in the calling. Right. Because the other counselor in the state residency was moving too. So I was. I was the sole guy left. I was the sole guy left for any, like, consistency from one stake presidency to the next. Was it.

John Dehlin [01:10:05] Was it the first meeting that, like, you made it sound like you talked about love, and he didn't like that. Like, I mean, that.

Evan Smith [01:10:13] That was the morning meeting.

John Dehlin [01:10:14] Yeah, I know, but I'm just saying, like, would an emphasis in love make McCune disqualify you as the obvious choice for stake president?

Evan Smith [01:10:25] If he perhaps knew I had a gay son from a notation on a record or something, and if he thought that that love. Emphasis on love translated to. Because you think about what Elder Oaks did. A week after this experience in General Conference In October of 2019, President Oaks gave a talk where he said, the two commandments, the two great commandments, where you can. Loving God is more important than loving others, and you can love others too much. And so, I mean, maybe McEwen was hearing those sort of things as well and thought, oh, if someone's so focused on love, then that can cross the line.

Weston Smith [01:11:01] Which, I'm sorry, but for me, like, I've already expressed some of the reasons why I think that this church can't possibly be the church of Christ. But for Oaks to say it that bluntly was really shocking to me, even even though I was in, like, a cocoon and didn't want to hear anything from the church, he told me that line. I was like, well, I mean, you're kind of showing your hand like, that's. That's bad. Like, that goes against every single piece of fundamental Christian doctrine. Like.

Evan Smith [01:11:29] Yeah, I mean, there's. So in my book, I have like many, many pages of analysis where that contradicts scripture over and over. Like the New Testament clearly teaches that loving others is what, what it means to love God. Like, they go simultaneously. They're hand in hand and you can't prioritize them. And if you start prioritizing them, you're contradicting what the Savior and his apostles after he died, what they taught. It's very clear.

John Dehlin [01:11:54] Say again what Oakes taught.

Evan Smith [01:11:55] He said that loving God is more important. And the first thing you should do, not loving others. And there's an order to them. Right. You can love others too much. So that, that's. You need to remember to love the

John Dehlin [01:12:09] gay people too much, basically.

Evan Smith [01:12:11] Yeah. And other. In, in that same chapter in my book, I talk about how other general authorities after Oaks gave that talk, they followed that same teaching. I think Elder Vinson did. And it's, it's. It's a pernicious line of thought that makes people think that following, putting, putting rules over people, prioritizing the well being of the institution and the well being of just following and kind of adoring the leaders is more important than doing what people need in their lives to be healthy and happy. That just really hit me hard. But anyway, going back, that was a week later. So going back to the experience with Raquiyun, I don't doubt that this was a message or a theme that had been talked about amongst the general authority circles. That and a lot of chastity will never change. And loving God is first. Keeping the commandments is more important than loving other people. That.

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:08] Yeah, he says. I, I can read the quote. He says our walk, I mean, it's all throughout. But this is Elder Oaks. Our walk opposes recruitment away from the covenant path. And he denies support to any who lead people away from the Lord, you know, and he says our walk demands that we do not compromise our commandments, but show forth a full measure of understanding and love. Our walk must be considerate of children who are uncertain about their sexual orientation. But it discourages premature labeling because in most children, such uncertainty decreases significantly over time.

Evan Smith [01:13:45] All right, I want you to hold on to that one, Gerardo, because I want to come back to that in my next conversation with the next general authority in 2020. In February 2020, I had another conversation.

Weston Smith [01:13:59] Are you going to talk about the special witness?

Evan Smith [01:14:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the way that the interview ended, stood up, Elder McCune shook my hand and he said, I've told all of these. I told you all of these things as a special witness for Christ or the name of Christ. I don't remember exactly what he said, but he looked me in the eye and he told me that what was interesting was one thing. Maybe I forgot to mention this. Over the course of the conversation, probably three, maybe four times, he leaned forward in his chair, looked me in the eye, and told me that if I lost my faith, if I left the church over this issue, if I lost my testimony, that I would lose everything.

Evan Smith [01:14:34] My family, Cheryl would leave me. I would lose my family. And that people who leave the church aren't really happy. They say they're happy one time, but they're not. They really aren't. And I told him, I said, I'm not leaving the church. What are you talking about? I said, I just. I've gone through this experience. I have a testimony. I've. You know, I feel the Savior's love. I love serving. I love trying to do good in the church. I'm not leaving. So I think he kind of regrets that he said that. But he did tell me that three or four times that I would lose Cheryl and my kids if I lost my faith.

Evan Smith [01:15:03] And then at the end, said, as a special witness of Christ, I've told you all these things. And that was just. Cheryl refers to that as ecclesiastical abuse. And I think she's right. So then she gets called. He calls her into the room, and again, we're late to this meeting, right, that we're supposed to be in. Otherwise, there's 100 people in the other room wondering what the heck's going on. They're doing the meeting without the presiding general authority and a member of the state presidency there. She comes in, sits down and says, what's going on? And she sees my face, and she says that she knows me so well.

Evan Smith [01:15:38] She's never seen me that distraught. She knew that I was just eaten up and I was just really, really bothered. And I'm glad that she knows me so well, because she just. She was able to do something and take the step into the darkness before we could see the light. That I was too, I think, scared and too conditioned to have the courage to do.

Evan Smith [01:15:58] But she said, is this about Wes? And Elder McCune said, yeah. And Cheryl said, I don't understand why Wes is an issue when there's other members of the Stake Presidency and other members and other leaders in the Stake who have children who are not active in the church, and they don't get asked about Their children, they don't get the same level of scrutiny. So why does it matter that Wes is gay and that he's doing what is best for him and his life and what makes him healthy and happy? And Elder McCune said, I can tell you're upset, Sister Smith. President Smith. Why don't you calm Sister Smith down while I go into this next meeting.

Weston Smith [01:16:31] That line bothers me so much.

Evan Smith [01:16:33] And I'll come back after the meeting's over and we'll continue the conversation and continue extending you the calling. Yeah, calm down. Your wife was not the right thing to say because that, I mean, Cheryl was. He left and it was just Cheryl in me, in the room. And she was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't hide my love for my son. I can't hide the feeling I have that what is best for him is what he's doing. And I can't feel ashamed for being a good parent and knowing that what's best for. For his health and happiness is what we're doing.

Evan Smith [01:17:06] So we left. We stood up and walked out of the church. And when we got to the parking lot, she was sobbing so hard that I had to hold her. She wondered if she was condemning our family. I said, no, we're just ahead of our time. Meaning that I still had belief that the church would change.

Evan Smith [01:17:25] We drove a half hour back to home. We were there for about 20 minutes, and I said, I want to go back because you don't give an opportunity to talk to general authority like this very often. So I drove back. The adult session had ended by then. So it was like nine o' clock at night.

Evan Smith [01:17:41] And the general authority in the area, Elder McCune and his area authority companion at that point were both ready to talk to me. This time around, it was a lot. The tone was much different. Elder McCune was conciliatory. He said he had had time to think and he had talked to somebody, area authority companion about the situation and, you know, wanted to apologize if he was harsh.

Evan Smith [01:18:03] And then I spent, you know, two hours talking with him. And I talked about how temple ceilings could happen. I talked about Taylor Petri's article that I had read. And I talked about, you know, the science between of sexual orientation, that it was, you know, epigenetic thing happen, occurring in the womb, that it was not chosen, that science is definitive on this thing. It's that we know as much about how people. Why people are born with the sexual orientation that they are, that we know about why they're born right or Left handed. And it's a similar developmental process. Like we understand so much about the science now.

Evan Smith [01:18:30] Why are we hurting people over this issue just because of the way they're born? Why are we treating people differently? That goes against the scriptures. And I mean, I just went on and on and on and it was a good conversation. They asked me at the end if Cheryl would want to talk to them. And I said, I'll have to go home and ask her. I said, she's pretty upset and I'm really mad that you made her cry. The worst I've ever seen her cry in my life.

Evan Smith [01:18:49] We are very close and I hate that that happened to Cheryl. And they told me at the end of that interview that the follow up, that they felt like they needed to extend the calling to someone else. And so the next morning, do you

Gerardo Sumano [01:19:05] think that decision that was made previous to the.

Evan Smith [01:19:08] I think as soon as we left the church building, they made the decision. They didn't call anybody until the next morning. I know that they didn't actually get someone there until like 7am the next morning to receive the calling. But yeah, as soon as we left, I think they were like, you know, and actually, I actually wonder if Elder McCune, he said when he was leaving to go into the other meeting, he said, I feel like, he said, you know, Sister Smith, I feel like I've been sent here to minister to your family more than even to reorganize the Stake Presidency. Which is a little odd because that kind of ministering didn't happen.

John Dehlin [01:19:38] How was he doing? Not.

Evan Smith [01:19:40] No, it's not happening at all. Like, we haven't had any other contact.

Weston Smith [01:19:44] So

Evan Smith [01:19:46] I wonder if he actually wanted us to leave. Yeah, I can't understand why he behaved the way he did otherwise. I mean, contrast that experience with him to Elder Perkins. Like the way he was in our interview was amazing.

Weston Smith [01:20:04] Right.

Evan Smith [01:20:04] And I'm pretty sure Elder Perkins knew he had a gay son. I can't imagine that. Elder McCune. I think he was stuck between rock and a hard place like this. Everybody wants Evan to keep serving, but I'm worried that he's gonna lead the church in the wrong direction. So what can I do to make Evan just kind of walk away? And it worked. Walked away.

Weston Smith [01:20:27] I also think, I don't know, just talk a little bit more about my mom because I mentioned during my piece that she was really depressed for a significant portion of of while I was growing up. And I don't know, we've talked a lot about it since then and I think that was kind of like the floodgates moment for her where, like, all of this pain that she'd been dealing with for years, all the depression, all of the, you know, the nights where you're getting home late and from, you know, church callings and stuff like that, and I think it finally just. You reach a breaking point. Right? And I don't know, I just want to also just emphasize how strong she was to even endure all that in the first place.

Evan Smith [01:21:14] Oh, my gosh.

Weston Smith [01:21:17] I don't know. I admire her so much, and I don't know, it's just. It goes, like, the. The way that the church hurts people goes so. It hurts so many different types of people that maybe you don't even expect, you know, I don't know how many people really understood how much damage the church was doing to my mom, but it's like, another thing for me that I'm like, you can't hurt my mom like that and not apologize. And I don't think the church will ever apologize for the way it's treated its women.

Evan Smith [01:21:52] Yeah, Elder McCain did apologize the next morning. Cheryl was willing to come back, like, again, speaking to her strengths. She was willing to come back. She prayed in the car with me before we went into that meeting. It was after the general session of state conference where I got released. I bore a brief testimony in that general session and just said, I'm sorry that I missed all the meetings yesterday. I had a personal family thing. And I actually said, my son Wes came home from his mission early because he's gay. And I can kind of see in the crowd of the corner of my eye. Elder McCune kind of, like, flinched, like, what are you talking about?

John Dehlin [01:22:22] That's not said at every transition of state presidency.

Evan Smith [01:22:26] Yeah. And I bawled, like, after that testimony, I bear testimony, the love of Christ. Like, you know, I said, I shared a text that a friend had sent me because he knew this. Everybody knew what was happening, right? They knew something was going on. He sent me a text saying, you know, unconditional love is the Savior's way, full stop. And I. So I shared that. I said, I got this message from a friend. I didn't say who the friend was, but I said, amen. And I sat down and I got so many people coming up afterwards and just giving me hugs and saying they were sorry that things had happened. And the General authority spent a lot of time in his talk talking about the divine nature of reorganizing state presidencies and how revelation is so involved and things like that.

John Dehlin [01:23:14] The mighty hand of God at work.

Evan Smith [01:23:15] Yeah. But Cheryl was willing to come, and she. After that. After that meeting, we met with General authority, with Elder McCune and the Air Authority, and with the outgoing state president and the new state president. They were all there, and she. For 40 minutes, was just amazing. She said, you know, she didn't name names. She's like, there's 10 LGBTQ people in our ward that we know. You know, after Evan started showing that he was open to being LGBTQ friendly, people started coming in and talking to him. There's all these kids in my seminary class that I taught. There's, you know, you. The church is really dumb for not finding a way to embrace these people because it's tearing families apart.

Evan Smith [01:23:53] And then the thing I remember her most saying was, I want all of you to think about how much you love your wives and think about the next time you want to have. You want to be with them intimately, that you have to be with a man instead. And that's not something that I think you all want to do. Right. She goes, that's what you're asking gay members of the church to do, is to do something that feels contrary to who they are and how they're born. And she went on for a really long time and was super impressive. And Elder McCune, at the end of that, gave. Gave us an apology and said that he was sorry for how he had treated us.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] So, yeah, so she kind of got her apology. Cheryl got her apology from McCune. Kudos to him.

Evan Smith [01:24:35] Yeah, kudos to him for that. I give him credit for that. Cheryl did a post a few days later on Facebook that kind of went viral, got the attention of a lot of people, including Richard Osler from Listen Learning Love, who's a great man. He's a really good man. He flew out to Boston and met with us, ministered to us. Like, the ministering that I didn't get from Elder McCune, I really did feel like I got from Richard. Just a good guy.

Weston Smith [01:25:00] Yeah. Yeah. I guess with the whole apology thing, it's. You can apologize for this specific incident, but I think my mom has endured years of feeling neglected within the church that no one has ever apologized for. And I know that it's a systemic problem with how women are treated in the church, and the church doesn't seem to acknowledge it at all. And that, I think, is more in need of an apology than anything, 100%.

Evan Smith [01:25:31] Yeah. That church needs to apologize for the way it treats women and the inequality that's there. The church needs to apologize for the inequality that it has had and continues to struggle with with respect to black members of the church and Native Americans and lgbtq. Like, there's so much damage that the church needs to apologize for that. I don't know if it ever will. I mean, President Oaks says the church doesn't give apologies, so I don't know if we'll ever see that. But anyway, after Cheryl did her Facebook post, I kind of decided I wanted to do something and write something. And so I started to write a post that turned into a book, in short, because I just had to be so comprehensive on addressing every single point I had ever heard and every argument I'd ever heard from someone that the church could never change its position on gay marriage.

Evan Smith [01:26:17] And so I spent from October 2019 until February 2020 working on this draft. I spent the time I would have spent on my calling basically doing this. And In February of 2020, Elder Eyring, President Eyring, was in town for Clayton Christensen, another general Authority's funeral. And I had by that time, connected with some other people who. Who had been trying to effect change and gotten email addresses of the Brethren. So I emailed them all a copy of my manuscript and said, you know, President Eyring, while you're in town, I'd love to meet with you.

Evan Smith [01:26:56] I mentioned that my, you know, that President Nelson came to my dad's viewing, and that meant a lot to me and just kind of kept it friendly. But I did say I had this bad experience with Elder McCune, and I had Elder McCune copied on the email, and I said, you know, I'm going to publish this, and a lot of social media groups that I'm in, and it's going to be out there. It talks about the bad experience of Elder McCune, but more importantly, it talks about how the church could change on this issue.

Evan Smith [01:27:22] I pointed them to certain parts of the book, asking them to pay attention to those parts. One part in particular I wanted them to look at was a chapter where I say, you don't even have to. The church doesn't even have to start calling gay marriage. Okay?

Evan Smith [01:27:41] It can continue to say, oh, it's bad, but say that there's an exception. Right? They already do that in a lot of circumstances. They allow for certain exceptions to occur. One that I wrote about in my book that I kind of. That Cheryl didn't want me to include, but I think it's important to have that distinction is the way the church treats abortion, right? You have women.

Evan Smith [01:28:05] And I talked to several other women about this before I decided to include it in the book. And I softened the way I describe it. So I hope I do this appropriately here. And I know it's an incredibly sensitive topic, and I don't want to come across the wrong way, but a woman who is.

Evan Smith [01:28:20] Who is raped has a biological condition that she doesn't choose. And the church says in that circumstance, if you've counseled with the bishop, you can do something that would otherwise be a sin. You can have an abortion.

Weston Smith [01:28:36] Right.

Evan Smith [01:28:36] It's not a sin in that circumstance because there's extenuating circumstances. So I said, well, the church acknowledges now that being gay is not a choice. It's a biological condition that you don't have. You don't choose. So why. And you know, abortion is like unto murder, apparently. That's what President Nelson has said. And murder is a more severe sin than the law of chastity.

Evan Smith [01:28:59] So why isn't the church willing to make that exception in this case and let people be married? And I understand, like, an abortion is a hard, traumatic ordeal, and gay marriage is the opposite. It's an amazing thing. So this analogy sucks for a lot of reasons, and I totally get that. But from a legalistic perspective, the church makes an exception to allow for something that would be a sin in one circumstance, but it doesn't in the other. And I tried to have, you know, I drew attention to that and to some other things in my email. I think I. I wasn't expecting a response from anyone when I sent that.

Evan Smith [01:29:35] But a few days later, I got a phone call from a member of the North America Northeast area presidency, Elder McCune, sorry, Elder Alan Haney. And he said that a couple apostles read my email and they wanted to meet with me.

Evan Smith [01:29:51] I was hoping to meet with Elder President Iron while he was in town, but that didn't. I thought that was a long shot, but I was happy to get a response. So I told Elder Haney that I was actually going to be in Utah the coming week for my mom's 70th birthday party. And he said, why don't you meet us at church? Why don't we meet you and your wife? Meet me at church headquarters. He was willing to instead come to fly and meet with us in our home.

Evan Smith [01:30:16] But when I told him we were coming there already, he said, okay, come meet me in my office. So we did that, and he said, I want to have your stake president be with us. So he flew our stake president. The church flew our stake president out to Salt Lake to meet with us, too.

Evan Smith [01:30:29] So in February 2020, I met with Elder Haney in his office, and we met with Cheryl, and we met for three hours and had a really. A good discussion. I mean, he is a. He is a personable guy who's a lawyer for. He's actually practiced at my firm for 25 years. So they found the right guy to talk to me.

Evan Smith [01:30:54] He started off our discussion by letting me know that he was familiar with our situation because he had actually. On the plane ride home, Elder McCune flew home from our state conference reorganization. He ended up sitting next to Elder Haney and spent the most of the time on the plane talking to him about how he had done with our situation and what had happened.

John Dehlin [01:31:19] The guy just happened to have been a partner at your firm?

Evan Smith [01:31:23] He just happened? Yeah, yeah. I mean, my firm's big. It's like over 3,000 lawyers, so maybe.

John Dehlin [01:31:28] Seems really coincidental.

Evan Smith [01:31:30] Yeah, it is. I don't know. I don't know. He happened to be there, and he happened to be on a plane ride with McEwen right after it happened.

John Dehlin [01:31:36] Right next to him.

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:37] Yeah. I don't know.

Evan Smith [01:31:40] But he started off our. Our conversation saying that, well, first Cheryl asked him, is anything. Are we here to talk about discipline for Evan? Is he here to have church discipline? Because he wrote this manuscript that he's, you know, saying he's going to publish.

Evan Smith [01:32:04] And Elder Haney said, no, we're not here. I've read his whole thing. It was over 100 pages. He had marked it up. He had put a bunch of tabs in it and stuff. He joked with me that I needed a word count, a word limit like litigators get when they have to submit a brief to a judge. And he clearly knew I wasn't a litigator because I didn't do that.

Evan Smith [01:32:22] And he said, nothing you've written in here is false doctrine, and there's no reason for you to be disciplined over. And I think that's significant because if people look at my book, there's stuff in there like, I was still when I wrote it. I was a believing member.

Evan Smith [01:32:40] And I hope that people listening to this recommend it to their believing member, friends, and family. Because I really, sincerely came from a place of firm belief that the church could change. And I was saying things like, you know, I have quotes in there about how Elder McConkie admitted that prophets err in doctrine. I have quotes in there about how the brethren are imperfect, and I have discussions about how the priesthood ban was considered doctrine, and yet it Changed. There's a lot of stuff in there that I think a lot of members of the church are unfamiliar with that it's good for them to hear that this general authority thought that wasn't anything that was worthy of me getting in trouble about.

Evan Smith [01:33:31] So, you know, it's a book that really does say this is the church is wrong on this issue and it needs to change. And yet Elder Haney didn't condemn me for writing it. He did seem to want to have me not publish the part about Elder McCune, that chapter.

Evan Smith [01:33:48] And he said he used the idea that I wouldn't hit my target audience if I included that chapter. He said, what's your target? Who's your target audience? And I said, well, believing members because they're the ones that need to have a change of heart on this issue. And he said, well, if your target audience is believing members, you should probably leave that out. And I talked to some other people afterwards and I don't want to leave that out. I think it's very important that what I did instead was I added a whole section about why I think it's good for the church that I include it because I think it's good for church members to see that a general authority apologized.

Evan Smith [01:34:21] It's good for the church. It's good for the church to see, to have this discussion be out there. And it's the same reason why I'm doing this today. I'm being transparent and talking about. And not disclosing, not divulging, not withholding names anymore either.

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:37] Do you get a sense that one of the main reasons you were called to visit with Elder Haney. Yeah, Elder Haney was to prevent or discourage you from publishing the book or at least that section.

Evan Smith [01:34:54] Yes, yeah, I get that impression. He was willing to talk about everything and everything, but I think that was clearly a motivating factor was to try to not have me talk about that experience with Elder McCune.

John Dehlin [01:35:11] He also has some comments about your. The tone of the book, right?

Evan Smith [01:35:14] Yeah, yeah. The tone of book was angry that I would, I would alienate my believing audience if I was, if I kept that tone.

John Dehlin [01:35:22] I was proud that he made a comparison there.

Evan Smith [01:35:24] Oh yeah, he did. He said it was. He said that the tone of my book was similar to the tone from a Mormon stories episode where people are just going on and doing a tell all. So can't have that. He's aware of Mormon stories.

Evan Smith [01:35:39] I told him, I said, look, I have no intention of doing Mormon stories. And I didn't at the Time. It was true. It was very true. He actually asked me to keep a lot of the conversation that we were having confidential. He said I could tell people that I met with him and things like that, but he wouldn't appreciate me going on Mormon stories and disclosing this. So I'm actually doing something that I told him I didn't intend to do. And people may look at me and say, evan, that's really bad that you're doing this. And da, da. And I again, at the time, I was sincere in not having that intention.

Evan Smith [01:36:10] When I published my book a few months later, I didn't name Elder McCune. And I'm sincere in not wanting any, you know, anything negative to come his way, because I'm glad he apologized. But two years have happened, Two years have gone by since where I've seen the harm and the deaths much more prominently. I'm in a parents group on Facebook called I'll Walk with youh. It's a parents group for LGBTQ Mormon parents of LGBTQ kids. And the stories you see in there, I. I am just convinced that if we keep letting back, you know, behind the door, closed door conversations be the only time that general authorities are vulnerable.

Evan Smith [01:36:54] Vulnerable, yeah. That there will not be change in the church. We need to start having that discomfort that causes change. And in my book, one of the arguments I make is that change in the church happens when it's forced to.

John Dehlin [01:37:10] Right?

Evan Smith [01:37:10] When the church is forced to change. But I say. I say, but that's not a bad thing. That's not a bad thing. Think about the church being forced to change like a trial that we have in our lives, whether it's health trial or whatever it is that we're struggling personally, we pray to God, and because we're struggling and more vulnerable as individuals, we get revelation from God that we wouldn't have got otherwise because we're more open to it, because we're being challenged. So I say, look, that's a good thing. It's a good thing for the church to be challenged and to be on the ropes, because then maybe the prophet will pray and get inspiration that he wouldn't otherwise be open to.

Evan Smith [01:37:45] And, you know, I think that's even more true today. I still. I don't believe. I may do a little teaser here or spoiler, but I don't believe in the revelation aspect or in God even anymore. But I do think it's true that when an institution or an individual is kind of on the ropes and being faced with pressure like that, that they can get ideas and see ways to change that they otherwise wouldn't have seen if they weren't pressured 1000%.

John Dehlin [01:38:14] Like when I started Mormon Stories in 2004. 4. I had a lot of friends who were in the. This is one of the reasons, Gerardo, why the some in the Mormon studies community aren't big fans. There was this prevailing wisdom based on some experience that, like, once upon a time, the church was crafting an apology to, you know, black members of the church for kind of the priesthood ban and the temple ban. But then somehow the news got. Got wind that apology was in the works, and then it was scuttled. And so there was a conventional wisdom amongst the Mormon studies or the progressive Mormon crowd that if you make a stink about something, then you're only going to delay the eventual progress that's going to get made, that the Brethren will actually run the other direction if they feel like publicly they're challenged or told that they are pressured to make a change.

John Dehlin [01:39:14] And I remember just very clearly when Marlon Jensen, while he was still church historian, while he was a general authority, I don't know if you remember this, Gerardo, he goes out to Oakland in Carolyn Pearson stake, and he gives like a fireside. And he ends the fireside by saying, hey, I don't apologize on behalf of the church because I don't have permission to do that, but on behalf of Marlon Jensen, I apologize to all the LGBTQ members of the stake for what the church has put them through.

Evan Smith [01:39:45] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:39:45] And immediately people reach out to me and they're like, john, you can't believe what Elder Jensen said. And so I'm like, whoa, should we publish this? Right? And the whole, you know, the whole blogger knack was like, john, don't you dare publish it. Don't. Don't spread the word about this. Because their two justifications were somehow, it's going to retard progress if word gets out that an apology was made because you're, quote, getting ahead of the brethren. And I do think that the Brethren don't like it when you get ahead of them. I think that's actually factual.

John Dehlin [01:40:17] But the other argument was, this was funny. All the intellectuals were like, marlon Jensen has a chance of being called as an apostle, but if word gets out that he's apologizing to LGBTQ Mormons, getting ahead of his leaders, he might not get called as an apostle. And I'm like, if the church doesn't call Marlon Jensen as an apostle because he apologized to LGBTQ people getting ahead of his, you know, Colleagues or his superiors, they don't deserve Marlon Jensen. And that's probably a reckless thing to think or feel. But what I really felt was, all you have to do is look at the 1880s. All you have to do is look at the 1960s and 70s to know what causes change in the church. It's not. It's not hiding. It's not staying quiet. It's not behaving. It's. It's public pressure.

Evan Smith [01:41:16] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:41:16] It's embarrassment. It's bad pr. It's members speaking out. It's public protests that get unwieldy. That's what changes the church. And I just. I said, silence is the killer. Silence is the enabler. And all of this garbage about, well, a general authority, an apostle told me this or that, but I got to keep it quiet. That's the way that they maintain control. They keep the liberals and the progressives happy by these private, secret meetings and these private, secret firesides. That pacifies the liberals and the progressives. Well, Uchtdorf's my guy. Holland's my guy. Christopherson's my guy. There's going to be change, right? Yeah, but how long do we wait for Packer to die thinking Holland's our guy?

John Dehlin [01:42:02] You know what I mean? Hinckley's our guy. No change came, right? That's like that. You know, it's like a bait and switch. So, no, none of them are going to save us. Silence is the enabler and the killer. The only thing that causes change is public embarrassment, public pressure, embarrassing media coverage, and members leaving in droves.

Evan Smith [01:42:25] Right?

John Dehlin [01:42:26] That's the only thing. That's the only thing that's ever caused change, and it's the only thing that ever will cause change. Sorry, soapbox.

Evan Smith [01:42:33] No, I. I 100 agree. And I. I tried to have it both ways when I published my book two years ago, because I told the story of Elder McCune, but I didn't name him.

Weston Smith [01:42:42] Right?

Evan Smith [01:42:42] So I was trying to. Trying to do both. Trying to please both camps. But I now see, especially after the musket fire talk by Elder Holland, I now see that there's. If they're throwing more musket fire at this, then we need to do the same, honestly. And lives are at stake, and I want to do whatever I can to help save LGBTQ lives. And that means that we need to accelerate some of the pressure that the church is feeling.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:08] You also feel like Elder Haney didn't keep working his word of.

Evan Smith [01:43:11] Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know if two wrongs make It.

Weston Smith [01:43:13] Right, right.

Evan Smith [01:43:13] But he did not keep his word to me of continuing to have dialogue with me. In our meeting. He said he was available anytime, his cell phone number. So I texted him a few times after the meeting, too, including a month later when the BYU honor code fiasco happened. I texted him, I said, what's going on? And he texted back. And then he called me and I told him, I said, this is a disaster. Like for BYU to say that they take the section of the honor code that prohibits same sex dating, homosexual behavior or whatever out of the honor code and just to not say that, you just leave it out and not have any.

Evan Smith [01:43:57] That meant that gay students could start dating on campus. And there were all these pictures that were sent around the Internet of gay students kissing. And then, you know, the church came out, I don't know, a week later or something like that.

Weston Smith [01:44:10] Two weeks later.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:11] Two weeks.

Evan Smith [01:44:11] Two weeks. Letter from the CES coordinator issued a statement saying. What was that?

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:16] He says, 70, I think.

Evan Smith [01:44:18] Yeah. He issued a statement saying that, you know, it doesn't change that the removal of that language from the honor code didn't change the prohibition on same sex behavior on campus because it was inconsistent with the same sex dating is inconsistent with the Gospel because it cannot lead to a temple sealing. Right. That's what he said. And that makes me wonder, well, what about a widow on campus who was sealed but her husband's dead. Can she not date because she can't get sealed again?

John Dehlin [01:44:54] Right.

Evan Smith [01:44:55] Yeah.

Weston Smith [01:44:57] How many dates actually lead to temple marriage?

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:59] Right.

Weston Smith [01:44:59] Or temple sealing?

Evan Smith [01:45:00] Like, yeah, it's a weird rationale. Anyway, I asked Elder Haney, I said, what's going on? Why the mixed messaging? What happened? And he said he didn't know. And he got back to me and a couple days later he called me back. He said, I talked to some people and it was just a miscommunication. BYU misunderstood that same sex dating would be allowed. The BYU administration misunderstood. And I said, I don't believe that these are like academic professionals with careers on the line. They're not going to allow for. And it was multiple BYU administration people were saying that. Yeah. Because I actually called BYU when this was going on.

Evan Smith [01:45:39] I said, my son's there. I'm calling as a parent, making sure and concerned. And I want to make sure that. That I expressed support for this, for same sex dating to be allowed. And they said, no, it is. Yeah. When I called byu, the person I spoke on the phone said, yes, it is.

Weston Smith [01:45:56] It's official.

Evan Smith [01:45:56] I said, okay, great, thanks. So I said, I don't believe. I think there was an apostle who communicated that it was okay because these BYU administration people would not do it, otherwise. They wouldn't risk their careers on that.

Evan Smith [01:46:12] And I think that that apostle, someone above him, probably, maybe it was Nelson or Oaks or whatever, got wind of that and corrected it, and that apostle got in trouble. I actually have no basis for this speculation whatsoever. But I wonder if it was Elder Holland, because he was kind of like the champion that we'd all had in the progressive circles that change would come from out of Holland. And then he gave his musket fire talk in August of 2021.

Evan Smith [01:46:40] I wonder if that talk was given by assignment. And that's why he quoted Oaks. The musket fire thing actually comes from an Oaks talk before. I wonder if that was something he was made to do because he was the one who had previously done the honor code thing.

John Dehlin [01:46:56] I don't know, like, eat your broccoli talk.

Evan Smith [01:46:58] Yeah, eat your broccoli.

Weston Smith [01:46:59] Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:46:59] Go fix what you messed up a year ago sort of thing. So I have no basis for that. But I did tell Elder Haney on the phone. I said, I just don't. That seems odd to me, that would happen. He said, well, I don't know.

Weston Smith [01:47:13] We'll see.

Evan Smith [01:47:15] So, yeah, I mean, going back to the actual meeting with Elder Haney, we went through my book. We went through it in pretty good detail. He said, the comparison I was making to the change on the racial priesthood ban, how that could change and how it was doctrine and doctrine changed. It's different than how gay marriage could change because, you know, Brigham Young had always said that blacks would eventually get the priesthood. And I said, yeah, but he didn't. You know, I don't think that that was clear. He didn't know that was. He said in those quotes that it was not going to happen until the Second Coming, right?

Evan Smith [01:47:53] And he said, yeah, but it was still happening at some point. And so in my book, I just clarified again, I made a bunch of changes based on this conversation. I did change my book based on our conversation, but I just. I made the statement that just like he was wrong about the timing on that they can be wrong about gay marriage, too. They're wrong about one thing, they can be wrong about others. So I think it's still a pretty good comparison.

Evan Smith [01:48:16] He let me just. I'm just making sure. I'm reading my notes here. One thing that actually struck me that I got a little bit angry at, which I was surprised at. And Cheryl kind of put her hand on my shoulder and said, don't be so angry about this.

Evan Smith [01:48:33] He said he was close with someone who was gay and that he believed that we should love our, you know, love everyone who. We know who in our lives that's gay, no matter what. And I said, I don't like that phrase no matter what. I know a lot of people use it, right. No matter what. And I said, it seems to imply that we're loving our gay loved ones even though they're gay. Like, no matter what. Seems to imply that. Like, am I gonna love my left handed kid even though he's left handed? And I, I didn't like that.

Weston Smith [01:49:02] Honestly, to me, at this point, the whole phrase we love our LGBTQ community or like brothers and sisters is just such a. It just feels wrong. It feels, it feels like I'm like being targeted by something at this point

Evan Smith [01:49:19] because it's like gaslighting.

Weston Smith [01:49:20] Well, it's literally, it's like that saying, like, there's no hate quite like Christian love. Right. It's like this idea that like you say, you know, we love these people the way Christ loves them. And it's, it's, it is just gaslighting. Like, it's, it's just.

John Dehlin [01:49:36] Yeah, yeah, there's love the sinner, hate, hate the sin. You know, all that.

Evan Smith [01:49:43] Yeah, but that, I mean. Yeah, it's just wrong.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:51] Just really quick, just to going back at what you. Your theory about Holland. I remember looking this up last year, but Holland and Christopherson are the only two apostles who are board members of byu of the church education system.

Evan Smith [01:50:08] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:09] All the other ones are first presidency members, so.

Evan Smith [01:50:12] Yep.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:12] Yeah. It would have to become. From. Come up from one of them, I would assume. So either Christopherson or, Or Holland.

Weston Smith [01:50:20] Right.

Evan Smith [01:50:21] Yeah. Elder Haney told me in our, in our discussion that the church was loving on its LGBTQ policy because same sex marriage or. Sorry, that same sex attraction isn't something that would be eternal. He didn't say it that way. He said it's not something that they're going to have to deal with forever.

Weston Smith [01:50:46] Right.

Evan Smith [01:50:46] They have just as much chance to be exalted as any other member of the church. And I said, yeah, but only if they live a life of misery here. And what you just described is exactly the teaching that causes many of them to want to die by suicide because they feel like the earlier they can end their suffering here, then it's not going to be suffering on the other side. So they'll get there. Like we'd already talked about.

John Dehlin [01:51:10] Yeah. Even 15 years ago, I was like, oh, gay Mormons, you should be happy that you'll be fixed in the afterlife. And my gay Mormon friends are like, john, that doesn't make us feel better. Like, really? Well, like just the resurrection, if I don't have an arm, then when I resurrected, I get my arm. And they're like, john, just stop.

Weston Smith [01:51:28] I don't know. That whole thing has been beyond the whole homophobia of that of like me being torn apart from my life partner that I've built a life with. Right. Beyond that, it's also just very ableist. It's like, yeah, I don't know. There's a lot of people who are disabled and I don't know. I did a lot of research into this when I was getting diagnosed with adhd. Like, all this disability stuff.

Weston Smith [01:51:51] It's really presumptuous to assume that everyone who's disabled wants their disability removed from them, that they don't identify with it in some way. And so I don't know when you start examining this Mormonism actually critically for me, it's just there's so many different angles that I've since seen where it just falls apart.

Weston Smith [01:52:12] And I don't know, it really does take getting out of. I know, like everyone says this, but it takes getting out of the bubble in order to see like, oh, this is what was like actually going on. Right.

Evan Smith [01:52:23] And I actually did talk about the resurrection in that same context with Elder Haney. I said the resurrection needs to be something that is hopeful for people, not something that's dreadful. Right? So if someone's going to be resurrected and they're going to lose a part of their identity, who they are, or they're going to lose something that they cherish in this life, a companion, a love, whatever it is.

Evan Smith [01:52:42] That is a theology that produces bad fruit here. And by their fruits you shall know them is what Christ taught. Right? So, you know, we talked a lot about that sort of thing. I talked about the studies that shows that church teachings cause ptsd.

Evan Smith [01:52:58] And I talked about how the church has evolved a lot on sexual orientation teaching, so why not? I said, there's a train to doctrinal change town that left as soon as the church admitted that being gay was not a choice. I said that just the compassion that needs to be followed eventually. The science, all that stuff, it's going to lead to change and it's just a matter of when. And he disagreed with me and said the law of chastity would never change. You know, same thing. I said, yeah, but Healthy outcomes. Like if the law of chastity doesn't change, you're going to perpetually have this commandment that's going to lead to unhealthy outcomes for the vast majority of people who are following it.

Evan Smith [01:53:36] That cannot be from Christ. That cannot be Christ's doctrine. And I'd use the. What I talked about the abortion line of argument again with him. I talked about that and I talked about the other ways that the church could change without even a revelation. I said, why don't you just have somebody stand up in General Conference? I talk about this in my book, too. I said, just have somebody say they don't know.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:01] Right?

Evan Smith [01:54:02] That's a simple way. Just say, hey, we don't know what's going to happen with gay couples after this life. That would be a huge change because that would just allow for people to embrace the ambiguity and to live their lives without trauma if they need to leave the church.

Evan Smith [01:54:16] You can still not have gay marriage in the church. You can just allow gay members to leave it more easily. That would be okay. I mean, not okay. That's not ideal whatsoever in my mind. But I still think, you know, it's an idea.

Evan Smith [01:54:29] And I Talked about how 1 Nephi 3, 7 says, the Lord doesn't give any commandment except he provide a way for them for us to follow it. Right? I said, well, if we can see that the statistics and studies show that there is no way for gay members of the church, for the vast majority, like, you know, 80% of them, to follow the commandment, God hasn't provided a way for them to follow the commandment without trauma, then that commandment just doesn't apply to them. Like, you can still consider gay marriage a sin.

Weston Smith [01:54:55] Just don't call it a just.

Evan Smith [01:54:56] It's a commandment that's inapplicable.

Weston Smith [01:54:58] Right?

Evan Smith [01:54:58] For any gay member who feels like they can't follow it. Like, you can say the preference would be for them to follow it. But if they've counseled with their bishop and really studied it out, then that's an exception. That's a commandment that doesn't apply to them and they're okay. I said, there's things you can do. You don't need a revelation here. You just need to, like, implement some, you know, policy changes, this or that. There's a way you can finesse this. And I said, plus, you're. You're violating Scripture. Like, we had a good discussion.

John Dehlin [01:55:22] What this doesn't respect is the fact that the brethren don't like to Take counsel from people under them. You know, there's this idea of don't get ahead of the brethren. That's how you succeed in the church is by not getting ahead of the brethren, not telling them what they should do, not giving them that type of advice. It's a very altruistic and hopeful and optimistic approach. It's sweet and it's sincere, but it's actually the opposite of how you probably get what you want.

Evan Smith [01:55:54] Yeah, no, it's. It's very true. Very true. I talked about Elder President Oaks two commandments talk, and I said that was actually what inspired me to write something. It was a post that turned into a book, and I talked about how that just went against Scripture. And I said in that talk, by the way, President Oaks misused a study because in the quote that you read, Gerardo, that talks about how youth, LGBTQ youth, sometimes he was discouraging them from identifying as LGBTQ because their preference or their ideas will change over time. It was almost like saying, don't let them identify as lgbtq. One of the parents in my parents group, after that talk was done, reached out to the author of that study that.

Evan Smith [01:56:41] The footnotes from that conference talk, footnotes to a study, reached out to the author, and she responded saying, that's a bad misuse of my study. And the idea in the study is sometimes youth, when they're first, you know, coming to terms with being lgbtq, they don't know. Sometimes it's. Sometimes they wonder if it's bi, they wonder if it's gay. But there's eventually an identity within the LGBTQ spectrum somewhere where they land. But they haven't figured it out because it takes a little bit of time.

Weston Smith [01:57:13] Like, I told my brother, like, I'm like, I don't know if I'm bisexual or gay or what. And I even told my stake president I was bisexual. And so it's like, a lot of it really does depend on how comfortable you feel. Yeah. You know, if you are gay, I know a lot of people who identify as bi first because it's more palatable. Right. It's like, oh, you know, I can at least maybe tell my parents, like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll marry a woman, you know, kind of thing. So, yeah. Yeah.

Evan Smith [01:57:39] So I asked Elder Haney, can you talk to President Oaks about that? Can you say, hey, you misused this? And he said, sure, I'll talk to President Oaks. When he called me about the honor code, I said, by the way, have you had a chance to talk to President Oaks?

Weston Smith [01:57:51] About that.

Evan Smith [01:57:51] And he said, oh, I haven't heard back. So he said, yeah, I made him aware that the quote was misused or misuse of the study, But I haven't heard back from him.

Weston Smith [01:58:04] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:58:04] Oakes didn't call you an apologist?

Weston Smith [01:58:06] No.

John Dehlin [01:58:08] Weird.

Evan Smith [01:58:09] Very weird. One thing that was very interesting is I talked about how the handbook changes recently allow for bishops to not pursue disciplinary action against gay couples.

Weston Smith [01:58:25] Right.

Evan Smith [01:58:25] It's not a mandatory thing anymore. Gay marriage is not a mandatory disciplinary council. It's discretionary. So I said, why?

John Dehlin [01:58:33] After the November 2015 reversal.

Evan Smith [01:58:37] After the November 20th. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:39] In 2019, the November 2015 policy was that it was automatic apostasy.

Evan Smith [01:58:44] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:58:44] With a mandatory disciplinary council for legal same sex marriage.

Evan Smith [01:58:49] Right, right. Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:58:50] And now it's made same sex marriage worse than rape or incest or murder, I would say because. Because it was. Disciplinary councils were optional for those things. For those things, but not for same sex marriage.

Evan Smith [01:59:05] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:59:06] That got reversed.

Evan Smith [01:59:07] That got reversed because now they were treating same sex immorality the same as heterosexual immorality, except not really. Because if it's heterosexual marriage, you can have sex, but if it's same sex marriage, you can't. But regardless, anyway, I talked with Elder Haney, and I said, why doesn't the church do a training for all of its bishops that emphasizes that it's discretionary? There's gotta be a ton of bishops in the church that think it's still mandatory. And when they look it up, they're like, oh, yeah, I should do this. There's gotta be homophobic bishops out there who just will go after same sex couples. I said, why don't you do some training that says that, you know, this is discretionary?

Evan Smith [01:59:48] And he said, well, is it a bad thing that some areas of the church that this discretion allows some bishops not to and other bishops can use it? He goes, that's the discretion we want to let bishops use locally. And I said, so you want to have a situation where a bishop in a very conservative place might do a disciplinary council against a gay couple, and a bishop in a liberal place won't. But there's no difference in what the gay couples did. They're both just, you know, married gay couple. And he said, yeah, that's actually a good way to ensure that the church changes over time without losing members.

Evan Smith [02:00:23] Because the conservative people in that area would be upset if their gay couples were not disciplined. Right. And I was like, wow, that's interesting.

Weston Smith [02:00:32] Yeah. Or I was just gonna say, even.

Gerardo Sumano [02:00:34] I don't know.

Weston Smith [02:00:35] I'M thinking of like a bishop roulette situation where you find with one bishop and then boom, next one gives you a disciplinary council.

John Dehlin [02:00:41] I mean, that's calling a bug a feature. Like at Microsoft sometimes we would joke, that's not a bug, that's a feature. Like chaos by design. Like this is people's lives. Like when you excommunicate, like Dusty Johns, you excommunicate a believing, faithful gay couple that are attending church with their children and all their family member and friends are lgbt. You're wreaking havoc in their lives. And to just go, well, yeah, you 10, you get the knife. But you 10, we're going to let you go free because you're in Cambridge and you know Manhattan and.

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:18] And you know Berkeley. You guys are. Okay, that's. I mean, didn't. Who said our. My house is not a. My house is a house of order. Who is it that said that? Who said my house is not a house of confusion? Who was that?

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:31] Jesus.

John Dehlin [02:01:32] Oh, who?

Evan Smith [02:01:36] Yeah. So then we left the meeting after that. He asked us if we wanted to take a tour of the church administration building. So he took us on tour, took us down to the cafeteria where they eat and said that President Nelson changed the long standing policy where prophets eat lunch by themselves to now he goes and eats lunch with the other general authorities.

Evan Smith [02:01:59] It's like, okay, cool. Big changes in the church. Yeah. And he told us the story about how President Oaks was set up on a date with his current wife. And I don't remember all the details, so I don't want to get too much into that, but it was something like his, I think his daughters were involved in the setup or something. They approved and he thought that was cool that his daughters approved. He did tell us though that general authorities who are widowers are highly encouraged to date and to remarry and that Richard G. Scott actually refused to date and got a lot of flack for that, if I remember correctly.

John Dehlin [02:02:33] If I remember correctly by the Brethren. Because he wouldn't get remarried.

Evan Smith [02:02:36] He wouldn't get remarried. Yeah. Yeah. Cheryl said during the course of that conversation that it was really insensitive that they wanted west to be alone forever. But these general authorities who were like in their 80s, can't be alone when their wives died.

John Dehlin [02:02:51] 10 minutes.

Evan Smith [02:02:52] Yeah, they have to get remarried. Like, why is that? They want gay people to be celibate for forever, but that really just doesn't make any sense. She also says she did not like the disparate treatment in the sealing policies between men and Women. And Elder Haney, I think he said he was on the sealing committee or something like that. He said, oh, no, there's no disparate treatment.

Evan Smith [02:03:12] We do cancellations for women just like we do cancellations for men. Sealing cancellations. And Cheryl said, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, you know, when you have a young woman, when you have a woman who's married and her husband dies and she's been sealed to that man, like, she can't get remarried. She can't get sealed to another man. So the remarriage potential is like. And she had a friend actually growing up in her war, growing up, who had this happen. She was sealed and her husband got hit on the road riding his bike, and he died. And, you know, she was in her 20s, and she had to look at the prospect of trying to get remarried to a man who would be willing not to be sealed in the temple to her.

Evan Smith [02:03:51] And so we shared that story with Elder Haney, and he said, oh, I can see what you're saying. I can see what you're saying. And I was like, how do you not. Yeah, like, come on, you should. Anyway, how about the committee? There's so much that the just.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:02] I've never thought about it that way. That the candidates are probably less. Oh, yeah. For. For a woman who has been previously sealed because they won't cancel, man should. Needs to be okay with not being with her in the next.

John Dehlin [02:04:17] Yeah. A man would rather have a woman who's not sealed so she can be an additional spouse sealed to him. He'd rather have the unsealed wife than the sealed wife.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:29] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:04:30] Well, yeah. I mean, if you're. If you're a man who's never been married, never been sealed, you're looking for a wife. Right. You want to find a wife who has not been sealed to another man because the church will not cancel that sealing between that woman and her deceased husband.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:42] Right.

Evan Smith [02:04:43] Because that cancels the husband. Deceased husband sealing.

Weston Smith [02:04:45] Right.

Evan Smith [02:04:46] So that woman has to find a man who's willing to not be sealed. Basically.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:51] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:04:51] Or get an exception where they're able to cancel the ceiling to the deceased husband for some reason.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:56] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:04:56] Which I know they do in some circumstances. He did tell me, though, Elder Haney did, that in some circumstances, they have allowed for a woman to get sealed to another man. And I actually asked him about the church's policy where they say if a deceased woman was married to more than one man during her life, the proxy work in the temple that's done for her is she is sealed to every man to whom she was married. I said, if you're going to do that and let a dead woman be sealed to all of her dead husbands, why can't you allow a living woman to be sealed to more than one husband too? What's the sealing power? Should be the same. Sorry. Too excited with my hands. Sealing power should be the same here on earth or across the veil. Like it. Or if Joseph Smith what's binding on earth is binding in heaven.

John Dehlin [02:05:39] If Joseph Smith can be sealed to other men like he was. Look up dynastic ceilings, then why not just let Gerardo get sealed to Zack if they want to be sealed. And let God work it out in the afterlife.

Evan Smith [02:05:51] Exactly. I talk about that in my book in chapter six when I'm talking about the ceilings. Like when God said, I give you the power to what you seal on earth will be sealed in heaven. Maybe he meant whatever you seal. Right. And I'll just work it out. He'll figure it out. And I. Yeah. I just don't understand why there's that inequality. Because it doesn't need to exist. There's enough existing doctrinal precedent for the church to embrace equal treatment in all of these areas that it's super frustrating that they don't do it. And I think it's really because they're worried about alienating members. They're worried about losing butts and seats from conservative members who've been taught so many things over so many years. But I think they could get there if they spent a few years positioning it and getting people ready for the change like we should.

Weston Smith [02:06:40] Marinating. Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:06:41] We should be taking our vitamins. Right. That's what President Nelson said. Taking our vitamins for changes. Why don't they give us those vitamins and help us get ready for the change and say these are the. The doctrinal historical precedents that we have and blah blah, blah, and then slowly get us ready for that. But they. They don't.

John Dehlin [02:06:54] When. When lower level general authorities talk about not getting ahead of the First Presidency, the quorum of the 12, and that they're the ones that receive the revelation, they're not receiving revelation. They're taking the temperature and the pulse of the general membership and simply making a calculation of. Of when's the right time to make this change. Where minimum damage, minimum collateral damage will occur.

Evan Smith [02:07:22] Right.

John Dehlin [02:07:23] That's what we call revelation nowadays is like undoing bad decisions at the right time to minimize the pain for the Church. That's what modern day revelation is. Yeah, there's actually no revelation. It's just simply risk assessment.

Evan Smith [02:07:42] Right, right. Yep. Agreed. So the way I entered nnd interview with Elder Haney, we were going out to the parking lot. I had worn a rainbow flag lapel pin the whole time during my meeting on my suit coat. And the stake president who was there with us, he had a British flag lapel pin, and he asked the stake president, he said, hey, what's that flag for? What are you wearing that for? Oh, my son's on a mission in Britain. Oh, that's great. And. And the other Haney looking at me was trying to make a joke. He's a very personable, fun guy. I mean, I like him.

John Dehlin [02:08:11] They all are.

Evan Smith [02:08:12] Yeah. He said, hey, what? He looked at my flag and he said, where's that? What's that for? And I looked at him and I said, everywhere. It's everywhere. Because I said, is that, you know, LGBTQ people are thankful everywhere in the world. Thankfully, they're everywhere.

Weston Smith [02:08:28] We're coming for you.

Evan Smith [02:08:29] Yeah, exactly.

Weston Smith [02:08:31] I'm scared.

Evan Smith [02:08:32] But, I mean, it was a good discussion. And very frustrating, too, though, just to understand how disconnected. Even a nice, loving, kind man like that who said during our interview that he used to read dialogue a ton. He was like a dialogue Mormon for a long time. And then he realized that that area of study wasn't what brought about the fruits of the spirit for him. So he wanted to focus more on just the core principles of the gospel. So, I mean, frustrating that someone like that can not see the need for the change. I got to be honest with you, I think he does

Evan Smith [02:09:05] see it, and I think there's a lot of general authorities who see it and who know they need to do this and know they can do it, but the people at the top are calling the shots. And those people, President Nelson, President Oaks, they are so dug in on it that I don't think they'll ever change.

John Dehlin [02:09:21] I don't know, man. Like, who makes it up to the general authority? Like, there's lots of stake presidents and stake presidency members that don't become general authorities. They filter out dudes like you who see it and think that the way change happens is by making good faith recommendations. And they elevate the people that never look at it, so they never see it, they never think it, they never look at it. They certainly never say it. So they never see it. Or at least they don't know that they see it. And they're the ones that get elevated. Don't you think?

Evan Smith [02:09:56] I, I agree with you.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:57] Especially if you look at the people who have been called as apostles in the last few years. You know, Elder Gong.

John Dehlin [02:10:04] Corporate men.

Gerardo Sumano [02:10:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:06] Total corporate men.

Evan Smith [02:10:07] Yeah. No, yes men are the ones who, who get promoted, I guess.

John Dehlin [02:10:11] Company men. They used to be called company men for sure.

Evan Smith [02:10:14] But I, I do think they're. I mean, I was, I was eager. I was a yes man in a lot of ways in my callings. But that leads me to believe that there are a lot of yes men in callings who wish things were different, even though they are publicly and being yes men, if that makes sense. I don't know when we'll have a change. The charge of the apostles that they take to agree with whatever the majority of the quorum says, they have to publicly agree as if it's their opinion. Every apostle takes that charge when they get called an apostle. According to Harold B. Lee, anyway, when he. Well, no, not.

John Dehlin [02:10:51] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:10:52] Was it Harold B. Lee?

John Dehlin [02:10:53] I don't know who wrote it.

Evan Smith [02:10:53] No, not Harold B. Lee. Sorry. It doesn't matter. It's in the book. That's the charge that the apostles take. I don't know when we'll have a majority of the apostles who have kind of worked their way up as yes men, but now that they recognize that there's a majority who want to change, they're willing to talk about it being a change. I don't know when that will happen, but I do know that I feel strong external circumstances and forcing and pressure is what's going to make that eventual shift. But again, it's not going to come

John Dehlin [02:11:22] from like general authorities pressuring apostles.

Evan Smith [02:11:26] No, no.

John Dehlin [02:11:27] It's going to come from like news media. Social media.

Evan Smith [02:11:32] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:11:33] Protests, people leaving.

Evan Smith [02:11:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:36] Embarrassing news articles.

Evan Smith [02:11:38] Yeah. I mean, I would personally love for the government to say any organization that treats people of a constitutionally protected class differently amongst their congregants, that church will lose its tax exempt status if it does that. It's not infringing on their religious freedom. They can still believe whatever the heck they want. But if they are treating people differently, like the government is not allowed to do, then they can still religiously have whatever beliefs they want. We're not going to shut down their church. But they just won't. They'll have to start paying taxes. I would love to see that. But that's like a pipe dream that'll never happen.

Evan Smith [02:12:12] But that's what I'd love to see. But anyway, so coming out of that meeting, I hired an editor, active church member in Texas She's a writer, She's a really good friend. She's great. Did a great job of helping me tone down, put a better, softer tone on my book.

Evan Smith [02:12:35] She had me move the Elder McCune story from chapter two to chapter nine after I laid out all the arguments for how the church could change its doctrine and all the story of my family, what we'd been through.

Evan Smith [02:12:45] And after I'd done all of that, then like second to last chapter, you know, it was there. So it was great working with her. I published the book in July 2020 and simultaneously went on Richard Oster's podcast Listen, Learn to love where episode 291. Cheryl and I went on that together to talk about about the book being released.

Evan and Family Resign Church Membership

Evan Smith [02:13:01] Since the book came out, I was asked to be the moderator for the Affirmation Conference, the church leaders session of the Affirmation Conference. I was still attending church. I decided I was going to be that believer who could try to continue to affect change.

Evan Smith [02:13:19] Meanwhile, I'm still studying a lot all the way. I was asked to be a speaker at a multi stake conference in Washington state too, and stuff like that. But at the end of 2020 with Patrick Mason, Patrick Mason was a speaker too. Ben Shalatti was a speaker.

Evan Smith [02:13:33] I did it all virtually right. I didn't fly there. It was all Covid. So it was done over zoom. But at the end of 2020, I started. So this is several months after my book's been out there, which I think is important to emphasize because I wrote my book as a believer still. I still believed, even though nuanced and whatever.

Evan Smith [02:13:52] In the end of 2020, I started listening more to Mormon stories. And then I started coming across the David Bacavoi episodes. And that really, that kind of was a shift for me when I started understanding what he describes as the biblical scholarship of who actually wrote the Bible when it was written.

Evan Smith [02:14:12] And then I started reading books by Bart Ehrman, who's a prominent biblical scholar who, who talks a lot about how the New Testament, how it was actually written, how Jesus. One of the books that is really amazing I encourage anyone to read is How Jesus Became God goes through the historical analysis of why the early Christians turned this apocalyptic preacher Jesus into God.

Evan Smith [02:14:38] It's really fascinating. I started going down that rabbit hole of biblical scholarship and then what I had been holding onto with the thread on the Book of Mormon, it just fell apart because I said the Book of Mormon relies so much on the Bible being literal that if even the Bible is not literally true, it's not historical. Then the Book of Mormon can't really have any historicity at all. Even if it was coming through Joseph's mind. The idea that it was, like, maybe not completely historically correct because it came through Joseph's mind and he was interpreting and. And translating things in his vision. I just.

Evan Smith [02:15:13] The Bible having so many problems with it, too, just made me realize none of it holds up. Then. Even after that, though, I decided I would try to be a believer still, in a way. I believe that the Scriptures are just good allegories. They're good stories. They're powerful.

Evan Smith [02:15:34] You can just see the goodness in them and still believe. And so I kept going to church. I was still going to church. I had a friend. You're in lav your.

Weston Smith [02:15:42] Well, I don't know, because everyone in our family at this point was kind of already not going. And he was like, it was really just like watching someone. At first it was like watching someone swim upstream, and then I was watching someone swim up Niagara Falls. And it's just like, it's not going to happen. Like. And we could all kind of see. We're like, is he okay? Like, is. Because he would. You'd spend, like, hours and hours and hours kind of going through this. And, like. And I don't know. I think he probably took leaving the hardest out of anyone in our family, to be honest. For sure.

Evan Smith [02:16:16] I mean, my. It's ancestry, it's. It's how, it's. It was a huge part of me, and it still is. Like, I don't think I'll ever not be Mormon, even though I've. I've resigned my membership. Spoiler. It's just I. It's part of who I am.

John Dehlin [02:16:35] So I stayed 13 years after I lost my faith.

Weston Smith [02:16:40] Yeah, I. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:16:43] Hold my root beer.

Evan Smith [02:16:47] I was only. I guess I was only like a year and a half, something like that. But I wasn't going every week.

John Dehlin [02:16:53] My kids are still asking.

Weston Smith [02:16:54] No, it was if I'm okay. It was still more like the. I don't know, just the obsession.

Evan Smith [02:16:59] Like, yeah, it was very.

Weston Smith [02:17:00] Where, like, every single dinner table conversation would somehow come back to how Joseph Smith had done this or that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we would. All of us would just be like, oh, my God, not again, please.

Evan Smith [02:17:15] I had Mormon stories going all the time. Like, I would listen to it, you know, everywhere. I was walking around my sister.

Weston Smith [02:17:22] I was living in Toronto already, I think, and I got calls from my sister being like, I can't. I can't listen to another episode of Mormon Stories in the car with that. I'm so tired of it.

Gerardo Sumano [02:17:32] Like, I really.

Evan Smith [02:17:36] But I mean, I listened to so many of you guys.

Weston Smith [02:17:38] I listen.

Evan Smith [02:17:38] I like, you know, all the. It was like John Hamer episodes about how the Book of Warmer could have come about, Dan Vogel episodes about how the Book of Mormon could have been written. And that. That honestly was like the nail in the coffin for me was when I.

Evan Smith [02:17:52] When it was clearly explained to me that he could have done it very plausibly. It's not a miraculous endeavor. Happened over the course of like a year and a half. And he could have been preparing for many years and he could have had, you know, it was a few hours a day that he had his head in the hat dictating stuff that he'd been memorizing or remembering or if even as RFM says, maybe he had notes in his hat because it was a white hat and you could have seen the notes or whatever. And he was using the stone as a trick to deceive people, to let himself put notes in the hat.

Evan Smith [02:18:21] Like, there's so many plausible ways for how Joseph could have done it that I was like, that was just the nail in my coffin. The Book of Mormon and all the Bible historicity and all that stuff is just not there. Like, I can't continue to believe. But I did respect some people who believed metaphorically in the scriptures and in metaphorical Jesus. I actually read Marcus Borg wrote, I think finding Jesus again for the first time, which is a non Mormonism book. It's just a Christianity one where he basically just says, I don't, you know, I believe in historical Jesus, meaning Jesus was a person, but not necessarily God.

Evan Smith [02:18:58] But I believe in the idea of Jesus as God because the ideas that he taught are what help us, you know, find better humanity and be better people and things like that. I'm. I'm really butchering who his arguments and his summary, but in short fashion. That's kind of the approach he believed metaphorically, I guess.

Evan Smith [02:19:14] And I was willing to do that. I had some close friends. I'll give a shout out to him. Rob Bladen, he's in Texas. He was from high school with me. We connected and he would kind of make fun of me for continuing to do what I was doing. Every time I used the word metaphorically, he would make fun of me.

Evan Smith [02:19:30] But I made a joke with him that I felt a little bit like Neo from the Matrix because I was Jackie back into the Matrix every time I went back to church just to try to save LGBTQ people from the Matrix. But I actually was a little more sincere in my belief and my approach than that. I actually could see some good things in the scriptures, but at the end of the day, you run the analysis, and on whole, it's just not there. And the apologist arguments are not nearly as strong as the secular arguments. And then I started studying more about other ways to believe.

Evan Smith [02:20:00] What could I replace Mormonism with? I studied a lot about humanism, and that really resonates with me now. Just the idea that, you know, we all evolved in a certain way where it feels. Feels right and good to treat each other according to the Golden Rule. Be good humans, lean into that.

Evan Smith [02:20:18] Not believe anything unless there's scientific, unless there's, like, evidence for it, but treat each other right. I read a book called Good Without God by a guy Epstein, something like that, which is all about how humanism is a positive way to live your life.

John Dehlin [02:20:33] He's the humanist chaplain at Harvard.

Evan Smith [02:20:34] Yeah, exactly. That guy.

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:36] Greg, is it? Greg Epstein.

Evan Smith [02:20:37] Greg Epstein, something like that.

Weston Smith [02:20:38] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:20:39] Great book. I'd encourage anybody to read that. So that's where I'm at now. I decided in the fall of 2021, after kind of learning all these things and Holland's talk had a little bit of an influence on my decision too, that it was just time to. To pull the trigger. So In January of 2022, we all, collectively, as a family, resigned our memberships.

Weston Smith [02:21:04] So.

John Dehlin [02:21:06] Mm.

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:08] January 2020.

Evan Smith [02:21:09] 2022.

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:11] Two.

John Dehlin [02:21:11] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:21:11] Just. Just eight months ago.

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:13] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:21:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:21:15] And that's. That's such a huge deal to go, you know, branch president, bishop, stake presidency member, interacting with gas, your wife, all her leadership things. Return missionary model, family to your stake, to everyone. Resigning. Yeah, that's intense. Just this year.

Evan Smith [02:21:39] Just this year.

John Dehlin [02:21:40] And why. Why not just go inactive or fade away? Why resign?

Evan Smith [02:21:47] A few reasons. I didn't want to have our numbers be part of the church's numbers for church membership. Wanted there to. And also for me, I wanted to not feel like. Because my book was out there, and I hope it always stays out there for believing members to read. I wrote an afterword to my book describing my decision to leave. It's not in the printed version.

Weston Smith [02:22:12] Right.

Evan Smith [02:22:13] Because the printed version. I published the. The book initially just online for free and got a bunch of requests to actually create it and turn it into a. Into a book, but. So it doesn't have the. That came out in 2021, before I had my.

Evan Smith [02:22:27] I learned all these other things, but in the afterword, that's online@gayldscrossroads.org I wanted to be authentic and open with readers because I talk so much in my book about how I'm going to stay in the church and what my belief is and how it's good to affect change from within and things like that. That.

Evan Smith [02:22:43] That I. I had a lot of people I was interacting with on social media who were making assumptions about my beliefs, being literal, and I just felt kind of disingenuous that I wasn't believing that way anymore. And I don't ever want to be accused of being dishonest or anything like that. So I. I felt like publicly kind of resigning and making. At least making a post and just putting it on the website that I decided to do. That was the more most authentic thing I could do.

Weston Smith [02:23:09] So.

Evan Smith [02:23:11] And also, I just kind of want to have that symbolic separation. I know a lot of people don't take the effort to do it because they don't think the church is even worth their effort to take time to resign, but I wanted to make sure we had that. I actually asked Wes. I remember we were actually in the bank getting our letters notarized, and he's like, dad, this is like more of a pain in the butt than it's worth. Let's just not resign. Like, this is dumb. And I said, do you want the missionaries knocking on your door in 10 years because you still have a membership record? And he's like, oh, no, I don't. Okay, fine, let's do it.

Weston Smith [02:23:46] So, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:48] So, Weston, you talked about, like, worrying about your dad. Is he okay? Well, did you ever think you'd see the day where your parents and all your family would resign? And what was that like for you?

Weston Smith [02:24:02] I mean, it was always for me. Never the main thing I wanted. I kept telling them, I'm like, you guys, don't make any of your faith decisions based off of me. That was kind of the line I took because I was like, you know, I've figured this out for myself, but they haven't. And the way I was viewing it at the time was like, oh, I've had this personal experience with, you know, where I know what's right for me and what, like, you know, if it's God or whatever.

Weston Smith [02:24:30] Like, I know what direction I want my life to take, but I'm not going to try and impose that on anyone else. And so I kind of let them just figure it out on their own. And I was going to, you know, just take it as it. As it came. And I know the whole, like, happier outside of Mormon. Mormonism thing is kind of a cliche, but honestly, like, I have not seen my mom smile as much.

Evan Smith [02:24:56] Oh, she's so happy.

Weston Smith [02:24:57] She's so. She's so much better. And it really. It does make me mourn a lot for, like, the time that we. We could have had when I was in high school, the people that we both could have been if. If things were a little bit different. So, I don't know. There's a lot of mourning, I think, in our family still happening for. For things that we've lost, like, all of us.

Gerardo Sumano [02:25:18] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:25:20] But I'm. I'm really grateful that we're all. We're all at this point now, and we can all, you know, just enjoy being a family without any of the other strings attached. Like, I didn't realize how many strings that Mormonism attaches to your family until it's like, well, we love each other because we're an eternal family and we go to church every Sunday. It's like, no, we love each other because these people are cool. Like, I don't need another reason. Like, I don't know.

Evan Smith [02:25:46] Because we're good humans.

Weston Smith [02:25:47] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:25:48] I like, God's not. We don't love each other because God's watching or because we need to be together eternally or we have to keep commandments and. Or because we have the same spiritual beliefs or anything. Like, we just. We love each other because we love each other. And, like, Owen is Every. Every one of us is on a different little path spiritually. I think right now, like, all of us have a different perspective on things a little bit.

Weston Smith [02:26:05] Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:26:05] Like, Owen likes some of the, like, Dallas principles.

Weston Smith [02:26:10] Yeah. It's cool. I love it.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:13] I love it.

Weston Smith [02:26:14] I don't know. I'm of kind. Kind of like, I just don't care anymore. You've got the whole, like, humanism thing. I think my mom.

Evan Smith [02:26:20] I really like Eckhart Tolle, too. Yeah. Mom's more like, you just kind of like a. Whatever. I don't want to pay attention.

Weston Smith [02:26:25] Her and I are both just like, we've done dealt with so much bs. I just don't even want to think about it anymore. Like, And I'm just going to. For me, the biggest thing is actually finally feeling like I have control over my life. Um.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:43] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:26:44] And it's funny how as soon as I felt like I had agency in my life, that I actually started being happy, because I really didn't feel, like, in the church, on the mission during any of that time, like, I could have chosen different things, but I'd not. Not realistically given the circumstances. And now it's like the whole world is open to me. And it's a really liberating feeling and a really amazing feeling to have given where I was at before.

John Dehlin [02:27:14] That is so incredibly ironic because, number one, any discussion of the Mormon plan of salvation begins with the war in heaven teaching about agency.

Weston Smith [02:27:26] And yet irony is not lost on me.

John Dehlin [02:27:27] Yeah, yeah. But then you fast forward to the modern Mormon Church and just this month and last month, general authorities are telling. I don't know if you saw this, Weston, but they're telling. Because so many kids are choosing not to serve missions, they're now telling prospective Mormon missionaries that they don't have free agency, that they made that commitment when they were 8 or 12 or I

Weston Smith [02:27:52] think about, you know, to go back to the whole temple thing, like when I got endowed. That's a decision I made when I started singing those songs in Primary realistically, like, I want to go. Like, I want to see the temple. I'm going there someday. Like, that's when I made that decision, not when I turned 18 kind of thing. And this is the first time where it's like, you know, I feel like going out to the bar tonight. So I'm going to go to the bar tonight and like, no one, I don't have to feel any shame about this or it's like, I like this person.

Weston Smith [02:28:19] So I'm going to date them. I'm not going to worry if they're Catholic or whether or not they're upholding gospel standards or if, you know, X, Y or Z or any of these other things. And it's just. It's just so liberating. And I think people really just don't understand how liberating it is until you're on the other side.

John Dehlin [02:28:38] And yeah, that's the other irony is that your health and happiness returned once you reclaimed your free agency from the organization that teaches that free agency is essential but then deprives it from people.

Weston Smith [02:28:55] Yeah, it's very ironic.

Evan Smith [02:28:58] And I mourn. Like I said earlier, Cheryl and I have always had a great relationship, but I'm mourn. We have such a better relationship now. We're so much closer. So much. There's so much the dynamic of trying to make each other happy in ways that was harmful to one or the other or whatever we were trying to do for each other that we didn't. Each of us was to trying, frustrating, frustrated with doesn't exist anymore. Now we're just genuinely so much on the same page and so, so much happier. Like, I. Honestly, Cheryl has been smiling, like, at family dinners. It's just fun. Like, it's just fun.

Evan Smith [02:29:39] Life is. Life is so good. And I, you know, I. I am really. Cheryl and I talk about this all the time. We. We love Elder McCune because he put us on. They. You know, he broke that cycle for us finally. And we're never happier than we. Than we are now.

Weston Smith [02:29:56] Yeah. And, I mean, I'm not gonna say that there's still not stuff that we all need to work through or that Mormonism hasn't left certain scars that I wish would heal, but, like, I don't know, like, I could list off some examples while dating where I'm, like, where I probably put myself in situations, but because I was really determined not to be the good Mormon boy anymore and got myself into some situations I probably didn't want to be in. But, like, on the whole, it's just. I'm finally able to, you know, like, the fact that I'm even able to make those mistakes at all is really just gratifying and.

Evan Smith [02:30:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally agree.

John Dehlin [02:30:40] It's literally how you learn. You're, like, now going to do the dating and the courtship and make some of the mistakes you should have made when you were 14 or 15 or 16. You're going to make them when you're. My. My kids are going through that, but they're also learning.

Weston Smith [02:30:54] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:30:54] Yep. And they want to live because they actually can direct their life.

Weston Smith [02:31:01] Yeah. It's really crazy how much that, like, I. That's the number one thing I would say is that, like, it's just being able to choose things is just so. It's amazing. I don't know. It still boggles my mind. Just the difference that I feel just from, like, a couple of minor things changing in my life. Right. Compared. Because it's not like I'm doing a crazy different routine from what I was doing when I was in the church. Right. I'm still going to school. I'm still playing a lot of video games.

John Dehlin [02:31:33] Still league or another game.

Weston Smith [02:31:34] Yeah, still some league sometimes. And I'm still writing stuff a lot in my free time. And so, like, my. My use of time has not changed that much besides maybe, you know, a couple more hours on Sunday and whatever. But. And I'm still very much like the same person, but it's just so much better because I don't have to feel like. Because it's what I'm choosing and not being chosen for me anymore.

Reflections, Gratitude, and Closing Thoughts

Evan Smith [02:32:04] And as we kind of wrap up here, John, I don't want to leave the impression to anyone that, like, you know, I honor anybody's journey wherever they're at. There's a Rabbi b' Nai Lappi gave a TED Talk about crash theory one time, where every master story in a religion or in any circumstance has a crash, where you find stuff out, where you go, holy cow. The way I understood, this isn't what it is, isn't real really what I thought. And you have three options. Number one, option one, you can just ignore the crash and continue on, right? Just put everything on a shelf, not deal with it.

Evan Smith [02:32:42] Option two is to reject everything and just turn away from your tradition and turn away from what you believed and believed completely differently. And option three is to take the good stuff and stay with that and then form your own way of believing.

Evan Smith [02:32:57] And I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, and I said, you know, I feel kind of bad that I chose option two. And he said, no, you didn't choose option two. Do you take all the good things you learned in Mormonism with you? I said, yeah, I am. He said, well, then you're choosing option three. You're taking all the good that was there, and you're continuing with that. And I learned a lot about loving people in the Mormon Church. And obviously, my approach to the love was constrained by some of the church dogma and the church policies and things that I subjected to and had to follow.

Evan Smith [02:33:31] And I feel more free now to love. I feel like I can be a better person more freely now, more easily, without as much rationalization. But I don't want to diminish or forget the good things I did learn in the church. I learned a lot about community, right? I mean, being able to draw on people. When we moved. When we moved to Massachusetts, we had no family, and we went to church one Sunday, met some people, went over to their house for dinner. They're our best friends to this day. They stood by us. They're amazing people.

Evan Smith [02:34:01] I. I love the church. For the people that brought into my life, Cheryl, my kids, there's so much good that has come from the church that I can't be. I'm angry at a church. I'm angry at it, yes. But I'm also grateful in a way, and I'll always feel grateful for a lot of things, and I respect wherever anyone's at. But I would say if you don't like the church's position on LGBTQ issues, or on women's issues or whatever it is, speak out somehow. Right. If you're an active member and you don't want to be complicit. Silence is complicity. Find a way to do something about it.

Evan Smith [02:34:38] If you're going to stay, fine. But find a way to go as far as you can with the bishop or stake president that you have.

Weston Smith [02:34:48] Right.

Evan Smith [02:34:48] Whatever that may be.

Weston Smith [02:34:49] I would. I mean, I would really encourage everyone, like, if you're able to leave, like try and leave. And I understand that for some people it's not going to be safe. It's. Yeah. Socially or for whatever reason. But if you can, you know, like try. Because it's one of the only ways you can really get your point across that this.

Evan Smith [02:35:10] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:35:11] And. And I don't know, just because giving the church more resources at this point is going to be more resources into fighting things like marriage equality,

John Dehlin [02:35:21] trans rights.

Weston Smith [02:35:22] Trans rights, yeah. And these are things that are. We. We see are being attacked, you know, Renewed vigor. Yeah.

Evan Smith [02:35:29] Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:35:29] And so, I don't know, it's just really, really consider what your values are, I think is what I would ask of people.

Evan Smith [02:35:41] Yeah. I mean, the new thing is to pay your tithing to other charities and consider yourself a full tithe payer too.

John Dehlin [02:35:45] Right.

Evan Smith [02:35:46] A lot of progressive Mormons are doing that now. So if you want to do that, don't devote your time or your money to the church and you want to stay, to be a voice inside and you publicly talk about things like, okay,

Weston Smith [02:35:56] yeah, find some way.

Evan Smith [02:35:57] Find a way.

Weston Smith [02:35:58] Right. To make them.

Evan Smith [02:35:59] But if you can leave, leave too. Like, that's obviously what's brought us the most happiness, is leaving. So I think that's the first endorsement, but I don't want to dictate anybody's path and I want to honor wherever anyone is. So.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:36:14] Wow. Did we do it?

Evan Smith [02:36:16] Did we make it through? I think we did. It was a lot. That was powerful.

John Dehlin [02:36:22] Yeah. Super powerful. Super beautiful. Gerardo, any final words or thoughts you want to share? You've. I know this is an issue that touches you and that you feel passionately about.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:33] Yeah. I don't know. I think that did a good job. All I can think of is the truth will set you free. Right.

John Dehlin [02:36:41] Yeah. And then some say. But first it will piss you off. Right.

Evan Smith [02:36:46] Yeah, that's true.

John Dehlin [02:36:49] All right. All right. Well, thanks, Gerardo, for making this happen today, for helping with the show notes and time codes and all that you do for us, scheduling it and producing and co hosting.

Gerardo Sumano [02:37:02] So.

John Dehlin [02:37:02] You're awesome, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [02:37:03] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [02:37:04] Yeah, thank you. You make Mormon stories way better than it would have been otherwise.

Gerardo Sumano [02:37:10] Thank you.

Weston Smith [02:37:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:13] And I guess a final plug. Evan Smith's book, Gay Latter Day Saint Crossroads, My journey, your journey. And a scripture based path forward that I'm sure Downey jokes has on his desk.

Evan Smith [02:37:29] I hope so.

John Dehlin [02:37:30] With lots of dog eared corners and yellow stickies.

Evan Smith [02:37:34] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:37:35] It's like make change in 30 years. You know, here's the path. Don't give credit to Evan, but there

Evan Smith [02:37:42] are so many books out there now. Like Blair Ostler has a book, Queer Mormon Theology.

John Dehlin [02:37:46] Carolyn Pearson wrote Circling the Wagons.

Evan Smith [02:37:49] Like, you know, she endorsed my book. Actually my editor got her to endorse my book. There's several endorsements at the beginning of the book from, from other Latter Day Saint authors. There's a path that the brethren can follow. It's so clear.

John Dehlin [02:37:59] But not without destroying the church. But, you know, that's another thing.

Evan Smith [02:38:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:03] I mean you mentioned butts and seats and also tithing. None of these changes, none of these changes are going to lead to an increase in tithing or an increase in butts and seats. Not one. But it, well, it's, it's, you know, you talk about all the good things we, we get from Mormonism.

Evan Smith [02:38:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:20] What I learned from Mormonism was, was do it is right. Let the consequence follow. Dare to do right. Dare to be true. You know, you have a work that no other can do. Like do the right thing. Forget the consequence. But I don't know that the. When you're in the seats, when you're in the red chairs, making decisions that actually weaken the church, make the church get less tithing, less member loyalty. I just don't think they're able to pull those triggers.

Evan Smith [02:38:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:50] You know what I mean?

Evan Smith [02:38:50] And not yet. At some point there will come a time when they'll get. If they don't change, there'll be fewer butts in seats.

John Dehlin [02:38:56] Well, that's what's happening.

Evan Smith [02:38:58] That's what's happening now. And it'll come, continue to accelerate and they'll make the change when it's becoming impossible not to. But in the meantime, lives are hurt. So just get out if you can. In the meantime.

John Dehlin [02:39:08] Yeah, yeah. They're just trying to minimize the damage and slow the leakage. The other book is this Body of Water, a memoir by Weston Smith. Again, these will be in the show notes and according to Evan, by Weston's book. Before you buy Evan's book.

Evan Smith [02:39:26] Yeah. Go to my website and check out my book for free. It's it's there to browse. Wes designed the website. It's amazing. Yeah.

Weston Smith [02:39:31] And I would say his is more of like an encyclopedia kind of thing. It's, it's, it's a lot to read.

Evan Smith [02:39:37] It's a lot. Mine's like a resource.

Weston Smith [02:39:39] It's honestly like the topical guide at the back of the.

Evan Smith [02:39:42] There's a 70 page topical index at the back with a bunch of websites cited and everything. And that's all available online. You can click to all the websites. I used only church friendly websites when I was write the book.

Weston Smith [02:39:51] Yeah. And it's available as a PDF.

Evan Smith [02:39:52] It's available as a PDF or you can browse it on.

John Dehlin [02:39:54] Don't even cite my research.

Evan Smith [02:39:56] I indirectly do, John. I indirectly cite your research because it's so good. But I didn't want to use.

John Dehlin [02:40:01] I'm salty.

Evan Smith [02:40:01] I didn't want to use your name.

John Dehlin [02:40:02] I'm salty. Also, you mentioned Kyle Ashworth's on the Record.

Evan Smith [02:40:08] I do. That's something that's in the book. It's also on my favorite resources page on the website. I think that is probably the most important document that anybody wanting to understand the history of the church's position on LGBTQ issues, they need to read that because it's just quotes from general authorities and everything that's. That's been said over, you know, over almost 200 years now. So, yeah, it's really important to read that.

John Dehlin [02:40:29] So shout out to our dear friend Kyle Ashworth of Latter Gay Stories, or as I like to refer to him, Kyle Hancock. That's an inside joke. All right, well, thank you, Evan. Thank you, Weston. Thank you, Cheryl. Thank you, Smith family. You guys have been amazing. And I know that this story is going to help save lives. It's going to help tens of thousands of people, if not more. So thank you.

Evan Smith [02:40:55] Thanks.

Weston Smith [02:40:56] Thank you.

Evan Smith [02:40:56] I hope so.

John Dehlin [02:40:57] All right. Thanks again, Gerardo. And thanks to all of you who donate to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. Your donations make all this possible. So if you donate. Thank you. If you don't donate, we lose donors every month. 5, 10, 20 donors a month, depending on the month. Some people get bored, some people move on, some people get in financial difficulties. So if you want to replace the current donation rate to be able to keep people like Gerardo and Jen and others who are supporting us, we need your support. So please become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor.

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John Dehlin [02:42:40] Thanks to Jen and all those at the Open Stories foundation who make this possible, including Clint Martin and Carrie Woodbeck, who's on our board. And I'm super exhausted and Margi's like texting me, where are you? Where are you? So. So it's time to go. Thanks to everyone who supports us. Most importantly, be kind to each other, love each other, do good, do a good turn daily, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories. Take care, everybody.

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