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We must be on a Mormon documentary kick. My wife and I watched the documentary “Mormon No More” on Hulu.
The show follows two women (Sally and Lena) that were married in the temple to LDS men and had young families before meeting and falling in love (and thus discovering that they are homosexual). These two women have a podcast called “Peace Out” where they seem to talk mostly about the process of faith transition or coming out of the closet or both. The documentary has several little tangents where it diverges to follow an individual that has been interviewed by Sally and Lena on their podcast. The documentary then returns to Sally and Lena as the main story. Sally and Lena’s wedding provides the climax.
One of the questions that I had was how do people find out that they are homosexual in their 30’s. Sally helps explain that by saying that church culture taught her to bury all feelings of sexuality until marriage. It also created a clear path and strong current towards heterosexual marriage and family life. After getting married, things didn’t exactly click in the bedroom department. However, women not being very sexual themselves and more being objects for male sexuality is almost cliché. In addition, Sally did not have anything to compare it too – maybe this is how most marriages work behind closed doors. Sally threw herself into her ward, her family, and her children as they came along and found joy in these things.
When Sally met Lena something clicked for both of them and the attraction felt both different and stronger than what they had felt for their husbands.
One of these tangents that the documentary takes is the story of some LDS conversion therapy programs and their creator Counselor David Matheson. David is clear that his programs were never officially endorsed by the LDS church. However, Bishops would refer individuals struggling with SSA and pay for sessions.
David was himself the poster child for his programs success. He was a formerly gay man that was successful in minimizing his SSA to the point where he was happy and fulfilled as married family man.
David later left his family and declared that his reparative therapy did not work, even for himself.
This segment was heart wrenching. It made clear how much damage can be done by sending the message that gay individuals have something wrong with them that needs to be fixed (in this life or the next).
Slate did a 3 in 1 review, touching upon Under the Banner of Heaven and Keep Sweet before spending the remaining word count on “Mormon No More.” https://slate.com/culture/2022/07/mormon-no-more-under-the-banner-heaven-stay-sweet-review.html Quote:Without reference to the religion’s history of polygamy, or any of the murders or other violent crimes that have dotted its track record since its founding, Mormon No More is about what it’s really like to be Mormon today.
Quote:Unlike its predecessors, the docuseries also gives a convincing explanation as to why Mormonism attracts followers in the first place—not some charismatic leader, or an urge to dominate young women, but a desire for family, for security, for community. Sally’s dad, Rod Osborne, converted to Mormonism as a teenager, in the hope of creating some stability for his future family. “One of the reasons I joined the church is because I saw beautiful families,” he says in an interview. For Lena, it was a desperate desire to know she’d see her loved ones again in the afterlife, after the traumatic loss of her best friend to a car crash in high school. She looked everywhere for answers about where her friend went when she died. The Mormons at her school had them.
Quote:In a tense conversation around the dinner table in Episode 3, Sally’s father, Rod, says, as a defense of his decision to raise his kids Mormon: “We do preach families are important, right? And your mom, she is always concerned about how we can stay together as a family. There is no organization in the world that can bring a family together and keep them together that I’ve ever seen like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
“That works well until it doesn’t,” answers Sally, as she grasps Lena’s hand and looks around the table at her siblings, the majority of whom have also left Mormonism in adulthood.
Rather than digging in to defend the faith, Ron acquiesces. “Well, the formula works if everyone is homogeneous. If everyone is heterosexual.”
Wow, I looked this up and this one is actually pretty close to home. I actually used to be in the same ward as the Osborne family. Rod was my Sunday School teacher at one point, and I even think Sally might have been a substitute for him one Sunday (assuming she is the one who competed in the TV game show Wipeout – that’s all I remember about her). I went to high school with some of the Osborne kids and again at BYU was in the same ward as one of them. Small world I guess.
I’m not too surprised that the family ended up being supportive. They never struck me as the typical Mormon family and were very accepting of their kids who were often kind of eccentric (in a good way). They were quite fun people to be around.
Arrakeen wrote:
Wow, I looked this up and this one is actually pretty close to home.I actually used to be in the same ward as the Osborne family. Rod was my Sunday School teacher at one point, and I even think Sally might have been a substitute for him one Sunday (assuming she is the one who competed in the TV game show Wipeout – that’s all I remember about her). I went to high school with some of the Osborne kids and again at BYU was in the same ward as one of them. Small world I guess.
I’m not too surprised that the family ended up being supportive. They never struck me as the typical Mormon family and were very accepting of their kids who were often kind of eccentric (in a good way). They were quite fun people to be around.
That is cool that you know them. They seem like a really great family.
Sally had said to the camera that it hurts to know that her parents pay tithing to an organization that teaches that their daughter is “less than.” That didn’t quite seem fair to me. For all the support that her parents were giving, it didn’t quite seem right. It felt, to me, like she would like her parents to upend their life and their deeply held religious beliefs to validate her truth. I suppose, I just want everyone to have some space. If Sally’s parents need to compartmentalize their love and support for their daughter from their religious beliefs and church participation then that need should be respected. Sally seemed to give plenty of space to her ex-husband in understanding his arms length approach to Sally’s now wife Lena (Sally and Lena were married in the finale of the show) and the blended family Sally is creating with Lena, I just felt that she could give her parents some of that same consideration.
I also had a little sense of foreboding when the parents headed off to church with their gay pride pins. I personally am wary of efforts to change the church (or even the ward) from the inside. I fear that it tends to isolate and marginalize those making such efforts.
Perhaps my fear is autobiographical. I have worn off-white shirts, carried a non-KJV bible with a cross on the cover, and made non-traditional comments in Sunday School. I do not think any of that has endeared me to the ward.
Nobody has a manual for how to correctly navigate all the ups and downs of parenting. I am super impressed with how well the Osborne family is managing.
I saw the following article that reviews “Mormon No More.” The author is a trans woman and former member.
Quote:Though I broke with Mormonism, too, and eventually found myself, there is one thing I still believe the church got right: we all need family. But we have to discover that family, instead of limiting ourselves to the confines of what we were born into, just like we all have to discover ourselves.
I watched part of this with my wife. It was good that my wife said she was watching it to “expand her thinking”, which I thought was uncharacteristic and also positive. I remember how we used to make disparaging comments about the national gay marriage law that was passed in Canada to people at Church. I realize now that we probably came off as bigoted, particularly if the people we mentioned it to were liberal in their political thinking, or had gay relatives. Anyway, the documentary was interesting. I was interested in the reactions of the husbands to these women. One had become disaffected with the church prior to his wife coming out. He said that leaving the church and getting out of the marriage were the two best things that happened to him. The other husband was indignant and disturbed he had no choice in the matter.
One thing I found interesting was how one of the women felt they could call her mission president to announce her marriage to the other woman and expect the outcome to be positive. You don’t get to hear what the mission president said, but the reaction wasn’t positive. I wouldn’t expect any happiness on the part of a stalwart former leader in the church. You know the doctrine, and know how past leaders are likely to react, so I don’t think the phone call could result in anything positive…
SilentDawning wrote:
One thing I found interesting was how one of the women felt they could call her mission president to announce her marriage to the other woman and expect the outcome to be positive. You don’t get to hear what the mission president said, but the reaction wasn’t positive. I wouldn’t expect any happiness on the part of a stalwart former leader in the church. You know the doctrine, and know how past leaders are likely to react, so I don’t think the phone call could result in anything positive…
I know that every mission president is different. I also speculate that relationships between mission presidents and sister missionaries may be different than with the Elders. (I did ask my wife about how she viewed the MP in her own mission because for me he was somewhat analogous to a school principal.) Lena seems to describe her relationship with the MP and his wife to be almost paternalistic. Perhaps because Lena was a convert and her own parent’s were not members of the church, she might have looked to her MP as a fatherly figure that would guide and encourage her along the Mormon path.
If true then perhaps Lena confused the fatherly/paternal association with the church administrator role and felt that fatherly love should win out.
I confess to feeling the same as you SD, that there was small chance that Lena would walk away with the positive reaffirming reaction that she was hoping for.
I finally got some time to watch this (so much to watch, so little time). Overall I think it dragged a bit at times and probably could have been done with fewer episodes but there are many other factors in play besides my opinion. I liked that many of the things those of us who have had a faith crisis were touched on. As we all know one possible outcome of faith crisis (probably the most common outcome) is leaving the church formally or informally. When it comes to LGBTQ+ folks leaving is my opinion usually the best option, and I think it was the best option for these folks (it was not clear to me that the man who spoke about his conversion therapy experience had actually left, and Brad Talbot has not).
I will say that I thought the church culture thing may have been overplayed a bit, but that’s coming from someone outside the Corridor who is navigating the middle way (my own path) and I’ve come to terms with most of the church culture vs. the Gospel (or the Doctrine of Christ).
To prior comments, I agree that the outcome of coming out to the mission president was what I would have expected. I also agree every MP is different and I think one of my sons had one who would have more supportive (and actually was when a missionary came out to him while in the mission – he finished his mission). I also get that some people have deeper relationships with their MPs than I had (he was an OK guy but I didn’t care much for him and we were not close). So I get that coming out to him may have been important to her. My three sons’ experiences ran the gamut, my older son is still close with his MP, the second son is more like me with no contact an no real desire (although he does believe his MP cared about him, which I can’t say about mine), and the younger son had two – one he liked and was somewhat close to and one he disliked.
Sorry, got a bit off track. I also liked the third episode which had a large segment about the conversion therapy experience (sorry I can’t recall the guy’s name at the moment). I think that episode also highlighted some issues with church policy and culture. I was a bit surprised that the Osbornes (the parents) ended up leaving in the end – I think I would have liked them to stay and keep being the influence I think they were.
Haven’t seen the show, hopefully those that did can chime in. It’s a TV show, right. Do you think they came out to their MP just to get an expected reaction on film?
nibbler wrote:
Haven’t seen the show, hopefully those that did can chime in.It’s a TV show, right. Do you think they came out to their MP just to get an expected reaction on film?
I think that the best description would be a limited series documentary (documentary broken up into multiple episodes).
That is a good question. It can be hard to say how the camera affects things and what might be done for the sake of giving the camera something interesting to film. (I know that some things from reality TV come across as pretty scripted but everyone acts like it was spontaneous. I also recognize some overlap between this show as a documentary and some reality TV shows I have seen).
Also, from what I remember the reaction from the Former MP wasn’t scathing. It was more in the realm of awkward and non-committal like saying, “Oh, how interesting. Gee, look at the time. I have to run.” Lena was hoping for something that was more supportive.
Roy wrote:
nibbler wrote:
Haven’t seen the show, hopefully those that did can chime in.It’s a TV show, right. Do you think they came out to their MP just to get an expected reaction on film?
I think that the best description would be a limited series documentary (documentary broken up into multiple episodes).
That is a good question. It can be hard to say how the camera affects things and what might be done for the sake of giving the camera something interesting to film. (I know that some things from reality TV come across as pretty scripted but everyone acts like it was spontaneous. I also recognize some overlap between this show as a documentary and some reality TV shows I have seen).
Also, from what I remember the reaction from the Former MP wasn’t scathing. It was more in the realm of awkward and non-committal like saying, “Oh, how interesting. Gee, look at the time. I have to run.” Lena was hoping for something that was more supportive.
I confess I am a Survivor fan and I’ve seen almost every episode of every season.
😳 There are clearly things done there for the camera/audience and some stuff is clearly prompted by the staff and not how it might naturally happen. While the base story of Mormon No More seems authentic and true, I do believe there is some stuff that was done for the audience. The call to the MP may have been one of those, although I really got the same vibe Roy did – I don’t think it was a rejection as much as it was an on the spot moment for the MP. And we only saw one edited side of that conversation. The one that really stood out to me was the Osborne parents announcing they were leaving the church at the end after portraying them as true and blue throughout the series.The author of the linked article references recent depictions of LDS communities in film and TV including “Mormon No More.”
They ask the question, is Mormonism being singled out?
Their answer is likely no. The docuseries format is exploding. In addition, there are more people not belonging to a faith group than ever before. Consequently, many more documentaries are being made and a fair percentage of these are critical of religious faith. Probably not any sort of organized effort to besmirch the reputation of the church.
nibbler wrote:
Haven’t seen the show, hopefully those that did can chime in.It’s a TV show, right. Do you think they came out to their MP just to get an expected reaction on film?
That’s what I think. And I think it was unfair to put the guy on television without his apparent consent. At least they didn’t put him on speaker phone. I’d feel betrayed if I were the mission president.
SilentDawning wrote:
That’s what I think. And I think it was unfair to put the guy on television without his apparent consent. At least they didn’t put him on speaker phone. I’d feel betrayed if I were the mission president.
I agree.
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