Alone and Unobserved

Carol Lynn Pearson has appeared on this blog before, principally in the context of her recent stage play Facing East, about a gay Mormon suicide, and her memoir Goodbye, I Love You, about her own experience being married to a homosexual. I’m not Mormon or even religious anymore, so one aspect of her message is lost on me (although her spiritual bent seems more mystical than Mormon at times), but I identify strongly with the stories she relates about the pain, secrecy, self-hatred and doubt that come from growing up Mormon and gay.

I didn’t even realize she was going to be in town last week until the morning of her engagement—a one-hour, two-author panel at the 2007 Utah Book Festival on writing for a Mormon audience—but I knew I had to be there. I felt I could rely on her to bring the discussion around to her favorite topic: the role and treatment of gays in Mormonism and religion.

I was right. After talking about her play, her memoir and her new book, Ms. Pearson spoke strongly about her belief that one day, members of the Mormon church would look back on their history, and on all the bad and good things that had gone before, and view their church’s treatment of gays and lesbians with shame. “We won’t ever be comfortable with polygamy,” she said. “We won’t ever be comfortable with the Church’s history of racism.” But for the sheer number of lives ruined and lost, Carol Lynn Pearson believes that official and unofficial oppression of gays and lesbians is the number one black mark in the church’s history.

After the panel discussion I hurried out and bought a copy of Ms. Pearson’s new book, No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones, and was the first person in line for the book signing. I wish I could say I was able to compress my deep gratitude and admiration into a single sentence, but I wasn’t—instead, she asked how I was, and I was tongue-tied. Such is life. But meeting her still made my day.

I spent the next twenty-four hours reading the book, and I can now report that, with No More Goodbyes, Carol Lynn Pearson has done it again. I recommend it to all gays and lesbians with an intolerant religious background, and to all their friends, family members and religious leaders. Maybe if a book like this had been available sooner, the suicides and broken homes it describes could have been avoided, or the happy family reconciliations it portrays would have happened sooner. But we can only accept the past, live in the present, and work to make the future better. With this book, Carol Lynn Pearson helps us do all three.