Oral History Program Rachel Cox Interviewed by Ian Orme 3 August 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Rachel Cox Interviewed by Ian Orme 3 August 2022 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Queering the Archives oral history project is a series of oral histories from the LGBTQ+ communities of Weber, Davis and Morgan Counties of Northern Utah. Each interview is a life interview, documenting the interviewee’s unique experiences growing up queer. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Cox, Rachel, an oral history by Ian Orme, 3 August 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Rachel Cox Circa 2022 Rachel Cox and Spouse (Wedding Victory Pose) May, 2022 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Rachel Cox conducted on August 3, 2022 in the Stewart Library at Weber State University with Ian Orme. Rachel talks about growing up in Louisiana in a religious home, coming to terms with her sexuality and eventually moving to Utah to attend Weber State University. She shares her experiences at Weber, meeting her partner, marriage and her hopes for the future. IO: It is August 3, 1:00 PM at the Stewart Library. We are here with Rachel Cox. I am Ian Orme, primary interviewer. My pronouns are he/him/his. Will you introduce yourself, please? RC: My name is Rachel Cox, and my pronouns are she/her. I was a student at Weber State, and now I work at Weber. IO: We are also here with Faith, who is on the camera. Faith, please introduce yourself. FC: I'm Faith Christiansen, and my pronouns are she/her. IO: Perfect. All right, we like to start pretty far back, since it's a life interview. When and where were you born? RC: I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That's quite a ways away, a good 1700 miles. 1980, if anybody wants to know. IO: All right. So let's see. What was your family dynamic growing up? RC: I grew up in a really religious Mormon family, which is interesting being in the South and not out here in Utah. Very Mormon, very conservative, very southern. My parents were both converts to the Mormon Church. My mom had been Catholic, and at one point thought she was going to be a nun. My dad was Baptist. They converted when they were in their early twenties to Mormonism, so it was a very strict and really religious home that I grew up in. I have four sisters: three older, one younger. It was an interesting youth. IO: How was it interesting? 1 RC: I mean, my dad is very much a male chauvinist, I would say, which is a strange situation for having five daughters. He would tell you that he's not, and he would also tell you that he's not racist. That's just not true, but I guess there's different ideas of what those things mean to people. We didn't talk about a lot of things. We didn't talk about sexuality at all. We didn't talk about anything of significance. There were so many words that were off-limits. On my mom's side, she was very—I put this nicely, I love my mom. She's very kind. She's also a bit of a prude. There were very strict guidelines of basically, “Sex is bad unless you're married, and then you have to have all the babies.” That was kind of the growing-up dynamic there. It was also very interesting because she had very strict ideas about gender roles and what's appropriate and not appropriate for kids in gender aspects of things. Because we were all sisters, we didn't have boys' toys. We couldn't have guns or swords or He-Man or anything else that was considered boyish, and everything had to be pink and purple and like girly colors. That's just not me, and that was never me. I was very much a tomboy growing up. I remember this one time, specifically I wanted a sword. I really wanted to be a pirate and I really, really wanted a sword. My mom was like, “No, you can't have that. That's a boys’ toy,” so she gave me this frilly baton for Christmas or something. Inside it had liquid and red glitter, and I was like, “This is perfect.” So I went and got the aluminum foil and I made a little handle on it and I said, “This is my sword and it's covered in blood. Awesome. Or the Barbie dolls—we couldn't have a Ken doll because God only knows what's going to happen between Ken and Barbie in the Barbie Dreamhouse. So mustn't have a Ken doll. So I took the old sixties Barbies that my mom had as a kid, and I cut all their hair off and then they were then Ken's, and that is how we roll. That was a lot about my childhood. 2 IO: We love it. The more the merrier. So you mentioned it quite a bit, your gender roles and what you were taught growing up from your parents and family. Was there anything outside of it, culturally or at school that you were taught about? RC: Not as much. When I went to school, high school and stuff in the nineties, we just didn't talk about it. Everything was just assumed to be heterosexual. But I remember as an early teenager in ninth or tenth grade, some of my friends coming to me and being like, “You talk about this girl an awful lot. I think you're gay.” I was like, “No, I'm not gay. That's ridiculous. I just admire her and I just want to be like her.” All these euphemisms that we come up with. “I just really admire her a lot.” It just wasn't on my radar. It wasn't on my radar as a possibility. What little was talked about at church and in that culture was just, “Don't do it.” But also, we were very intent on not having any sort of thoughts about sexuality at all until you're married. That switch does not turn on until you're married, and then your husband turns it on for you. It just wasn't something that was openly talked about. In the first conversation I remember having, I do remember my family talking about stuff that was starting to slowly come up on TV and in movies. It was always very negative about gays or bisexuals or anything. The bisexuals somehow were the worst in my family's estimation, because they just couldn't pick one or the other, and they were just selfish, according to my family. So in my mind, when I heard these things, I was starting to think that I was possibly bisexual. Because as you make that that realization about yourself, where you're like, “Well, I could still conceivably marry a guy if I'm bisexual,” but I could at least admit that much to myself. As soon as I heard that from my family, I couldn't tell them that I thought I was bisexual. IO: At what point did you move to Utah? 3 RC: It was in my twenties, I was 24, almost 25, and I moved here to come to Weber State. I had done some community college in Baton Rouge, and then I moved here and just stayed here. Originally, I thought I was going to go back, and then very quickly realized that was not going to happen. IO: I want to go back a little bit. That was really helpful for the timeline and some questions. Going back to your childhood, when did you know or feel that you were different? RC: It's hard to say. I always felt different in a lot of ways. Being a Mormon in southern Louisiana, you feel different in and of itself. I felt different from my sisters. I didn't quite feel the same somehow. I was very much more of a tomboy than any of them were. They were all very frilly and lacy and curly bangs and things. Little kids play wedding, and I remember pretending to walk down the aisle with them with a bouquet, but there was no one at the other end in my pretend play. I wasn't going to anyone. I was just walking down the aisle. I don't know why I was walking down the aisle, but there was no one that I could visualize at the end of the aisle. In my pretend play of dolls and playing house or whatever, I was always a single mom somehow. I just magically had children. But again, it wasn't like I thought, “Oh, well, this means that I'm gay, or this means that I'm whatever.” I just thought that I hadn't figured it out yet. I dated guys in high school and in college and things, and it kind of went through this whole… I guess it was like a roller coaster of, “Yes, I am gay.” “No, I'm not gay.” “Yes, I’m bisexual.” “I'm not bisexual. This is just a trial that I have been given. I'm going to try really hard to stay Mormon and all of these things.” 4 I didn't actually come out and start coming out to people until I was 30-ish. I started slowly coming out to very specific people, and I didn't come out completely to everyone and was completely open about it until I was 35. It took a minute. IO: What was your first exposure that you can remember to like queerness in any sense? RC: I'm trying to think. Angelina Jolie was one of the first. I had a major Angelina Jolie crush—who didn't. I think that was one of the first visual representations that I saw. Maybe around that same time, I had gotten really into old Greta Garbo movies. There was this one movie called Queen Christina, and she was this European queen who was queer. In this 1930s Greta Garbo movie, she kisses a woman, and it was a big deal. It was before the Hays Code of Censorship and all of that—that happened later in the thirties, so it kind of slipped through. That was something that I was like, “Oh, she's kissing that girl. That's interesting.” So I would say Angelina Jolie and Greta Garbo, that's the first visual that I had. IO: Was there any exposure to queerness in your own life? Any family members or any friends? RC: Oh, no, no, no, no. Well, I did have this guy. (Ironically, I always had crushes on gay guys, or several of my ex-boyfriends turned out to be gay.) That was a very interesting turn. I had a couple of friends, but we didn't talk about it. They weren't open about it. They weren't saying, “This is who they are,” but I could see that they were. So my high school boyfriend that I went to prom with is queer, and I didn't know it at the time. We were both very much Mormon and went to prom and took pictures and all the things. It's very interesting. But yeah, I didn't have a lot of friends that were gay. Later, after high school, I found out that one of my close friends started seeing a girl in high school and they got married for a while, but I didn't find out about that until later. 5 IO: I already know the answer to this question, but did you see any representation growing up? RC: Not really, no. I don't know if you guys have heard of Designing Women, old 80s sitcom. Fantastic. Go watch it. It is so campy and awesome. But it was like the eighties, and my mom, of course, didn't want me to watch it, in addition to any sitcoms whatsoever. Sitcoms were not allowed in our house, they're so snarky. But as a teenager, I was very rebellious and I was like, “Screw you, I'm going to watch it.” So I was watching Designing Women, and they had a couple of episodes that were very edgy at the time where they had one gay character, just here and there, that would pop in and then leave. That was probably the first representation that I saw, was either on Designing Women or Golden Girls. I think they had one or two gay characters that popped in on Golden Girls. But it was very taboo because I was already watching something that my mom would walk in and be like, "What is this that you're watching?" IO: Before we move on out of the south, let's see. [To Faith] Do you have any questions about childhood in the South? FC: I had one, but I don't remember. IO: Okay. You think about that. [To Rachel] Is there anything that stood out during your time in high school in the South? Anything that was special enough that you wanted on record? RC: It was very much putting on this caricature that was not me, to the point of joining Mary Kay, for Pete's sake. I was a Mary Kay girl for a hot second, teaching people how to do their makeup. Mary Kay in the South, it's like a whole ‘nother religion, and they have these revivals basically. But I was there because it was a whole bunch of pretty women, let's be serious. I wasn't really there for the makeup. It was more about connecting with these other feminine people, which was lovely. It was just all 6 very much like putting on a show. If you saw pictures of me back then, honestly, I look probably ten years older than I am now, back in my twenties. Just the hair and makeup, and just so much putting on something that wasn't me. That's about it. FC: You talked a lot about gender roles and sexuality. I was just wondering about relationships, and whether or not you were taught that they were available to be having. Do you know what I mean? Because you had a date for prom, so were all relationships off the table, or just sexuality? RC: Sexuality was off the table. I was not allowed to date until I was 16. I couldn't go to dances until I was 14. There were very strict rules about that. Even then, my parents weren't really into the idea of us having a boyfriend or whatever, but it happened. My sisters all had very early relationships and early pregnancies in their late teens. It wasn't unheard of, but it was frowned upon, definitely. It was not available to me to have any sort of relationship with someone of the same sex, that was not even in my mind as a possibility. I wouldn't have even known how to find someone else if it had been available. I wouldn't even know what to do then. Everything was a taboo. I remember I was engaged to a guy back in Louisiana. I should have said this, being important. He was from Nevada and we had met online. I did online emailing in chat rooms and things in the nineties, but before it was cool, before Tinder happened. We were engaged for a few months and he came to visit me in Louisiana and meet my family and stayed for a few weeks in our house. I had made dinner one night, and my family kind of left us to kind of have some time alone or whatever, so they would go off somewhere, to the mall or something. I make him dinner. We're watching a movie. I’ll just set the scene for you. Beauty and the Beast, Disney. We were laying down on the couch watching this movie, literally. That's all we're doing. Nothing is happening. Parents come in, lose their minds 7 because my feet are not on the floor, as if it matters where your feet are in the situation. But I mean, took me aside in front of him, just railed on me. I was just the biggest hussy that existed because I was in a horizontal position with my fiancé, watching a Disney movie. I'm like, “Oh dear God, if anything was going to happen, it would not be during a Disney movie. That doesn't really set the mood,” but I thought that was really interesting. Of course, we did not get married for multiple reasons, one of which was that his dad did not approve of online dating, but also because I secretly knew that I was never going to be happy in that situation. It was for the best for everyone concerned. I was only 19 anyway. Who knows what they want at 19? IO: All right, let's move to Utah. RC: Yay, Utah. IO: How were things like at Weber State back then? That would have been…? RC: 2006. It was different. I was in the theater department, and so I started out in theater and did that for two years, and then I switched to an English major. That was eye-opening to me in the theater department because you get a nice mix of different kinds of people that I had not been around and everybody was open about it, just kind of out there. Everybody's hugging and kissing and loving on everybody. I'm like, “This is great.” Yeah, it was a big eye opener for me. I was kind of an onand-off still Mormon at the time. Weber itself was a lot of fun. I loved my undergrad years. It was super fun, especially when I switched to English in the English department. I started a literary journal that is no longer in existence, but if you look in your archives, you will find the Epiphany Literary Journal. I was the founding editor of that, good times. It was just a lot of going to college, being around people that weren't like people I had grown up with. Even though a lot of them were Mormon, it was still vastly different from the type of conservatism that's in the South. Constantly reading, and all my 8 English courses and literature and all these things and reading about so many different kinds of people that I started to change. That's what changed me: college changed me. I thought I was a Republican; I am definitely not a Republican. I thought I was Mormon; definitely not a Mormon. I thought I was straight; definitely not straight. All of these things shifted in college, and learning and reading really opened my mind to the possibility that things could be different than the way I grew up, and that I could have something different. At first, I thought, “Hey, I'll just be single forever, and that's fine.” Because in the Mormon Church, it was very much impressed upon me that by this time I was starting to realize, “This is really who I am, but it's looked down upon. Okay, you can have these feelings, but you just can't do anything about it.” So I was talking to my church leaders about it and trying to figure things out, and I was like, “Oh, well, just be single and celibate . If Sheri Dew can do it, then I can do it, and I'll just be a Mormon nun. Yay.” I'm a spiritual person, and so there were things that I got out of being in the church that I felt was strengthening me in ways. But eventually it just came down to, “I can't do this anymore. I can't continue to put this whole huge part of who I am in a box.” It just became more and more uncomfortable. I finally had to leave. IO: Who is Sheri Dew? RC: She is a high-ranking female leader in the Mormon Church. She used to be the General Relief Society president, I think at one point. She’s written a bunch of books. She was CEO of Deseret Books for a while, I think, and wrote a bunch of biographies about different prophets and things. She is single, has never gotten married, has never had children, so she was kind of this example of what was possible. 9 IO: We like to ground historical events with individual people in these interviews. So, during this time, it sounds like you were kind of back-and-forth in a faith transition, but did Proposition VIII have any effect on that? RC: Proposition VIII did not. I had heard about it. I didn't like that the church was getting involved in politics because I'm like, “Church and state, people, why are we getting involved?” At some point in my late undergrad, I had a friend who lived in California when Prop VIII was going on, and she talked about that. That's why she left the church, because they were being forced to go out and canvas and things like that. It just really made her very uncomfortable, so that was the start of her leaving. It did register in my mind as, “I don't like this, but I'm going to put it over here because I don't want to think about it.” Then the November policy happened in 2014. IO: That was a response to marriage. RC: Right. That was where they changed the policy and said, “Oh, if you have children and you are a gay couple, the children can't be baptized. They can't go on missions and all these things.” I did some major mental gymnastics and had some cognitive dissonance going on, trying to talk myself into somewhat being okay with that. It took another year after that before I actually left, but that was a big one for me. I was like, “They should not.” There were talks that were happening in general conferences and things that would ping on my radar and make me really uncomfortable and really hurt my feelings. It hurt me on a deep level, the way that they talked about homosexuals and trans people as well. They were just starting to really, really go after them. IO: During this transitional period, aside from college, were there any outside factors that helped you discover or process your identity? RC: Yes. I fell in love with my best friend, who was married, telling me that she was straight at the time. She ended up leaving her husband for a woman, but it wasn't 10 me. Again, a lot of mental gymnastics of trying to convince myself and everybody else that we were just really close best friends, but we both had feelings for each other. We had met at the very end of undergrad, and lived across the street from each other and were very close for five years. Then she told me that she was going to marry a woman. That broke us, and we're no longer in contact. It tripped something in my brain that said, “Okay, she's leaving the church to go and be with this woman. If she can do it, dammit, so can I.” That's when I really started to think, “I'm just going to be out there and be who I am.” IO: That kind of opened up the box. RC: It really did. We were friends from 2010 to 2015. 2015, that's when I came out completely and left the church, because to me, it was an either/or proposition. It was either, “I am Mormon and not going to live a homosexual life,” or, “I am going to live my life and leave the church,” because I couldn't I couldn't ride two horses at the same time. I have known people who have tried that. I have dated women who have tried that, dear God, and that's uncomfortable for everyone. That's my personal opinion about that. Pick a horse. FC: Before we move on from college, I was just wondering because you said you work at Weber State now. How has the culture changed from when you were a student to the culture now? RC: It's changed. It's hard for me to put a fine point on that, but there is more discussion of LGBTQ issues and needs and all that, so I have seen changes. I am able to be open and who I am in my department and not be treated differently or badly. But I know that that is not the case for everyone at Weber, even now. I know that there are people on this campus who don't feel safe to come out in their departments, and that's really unfortunate and I am personally working to fix that. I am able to go to my boss and say, “Hey, we want to do an LGBTQ resources Community of Practice 11 for faculty to help them learn how to deal with their students and how to be open and inclusive and accepting.” The fact that I am able to do that now and not be frightened is a big deal. I started as a student worker. I have literally worked at Weber since 2006, then switched to full-time staff in different positions. Now I feel like I've found my groove, and I've found where I can do some good in the Teaching and Learning Forum, helping to bring these issues to the faculty and say, “Hey, we can do better.” So yeah, it has changed, especially when they started the LGBTQ Resource Center a few years ago. I mean, that marked a shift. Even if it's a small one, it's a shift. I think Adrienne does a really great job of helping to bring issues to light and fix what she can of inclusivity on campus. IO: So you would say it has improved? RC: It has. IO: Okay. Are there ways that you think it could still improve? RC: Oh, yes, I do, because people still come to me because I am out and proud and all the things. People know that they can come and talk to me, even if they aren't in those situations. I've had a lot of confidential conversations with people who are telling me not-good stories of their departments, or faculty that they've come in contact with who refuse to use people's correct pronouns, or just consistently ignored the issues, or were very uncomfortable in talking about it at all. So, yes, there's always room for improvement, and I am trying to be a part of that shift. FC: You moved from the south to Utah. I know we talked about the culture change at Weber State, but I was wondering if Mormonism culture or even just queerness felt different from being in the South? I know it was kind of a journey for you, but also just in general, kind of the community. 12 RC: Because Utah is conservative in its own way, it's different from the South. The judgment is more overt, I think, in places where it wouldn't have been in the South, not just about queer issues, but about anything. The fact that I have to go to a liquor store and not a grocery store to buy alcohol was mind-blowing to me, because growing up in the South, you just walk into a Walmart and go grab a bottle of wine, you know? Not that you want to buy your wine from Walmart, but you could if you needed. So yeah, the culture is different. For instance, I run into so many Mormons at stores, people that I know from being in the LDS church, that when I left the church, I would run into them at the grocery store. It was not a thing that I grew up with where I would run into church people at the grocery store because we were so spread out. Everything being more condensed and having more LDS people in my vicinity, I ran into people from my congregation at the grocery store, so they would feel comfortable telling me things like, “You used to be so strong. What happened? You used to be so spiritual.” “I am still both of those things, but thanks for praying.” I stopped going to certain grocery stores for a while just to avoid people and not have to run into them. People, they look at you. Now when my spouse and I go to the Home Depot or the grocery store or whatever, and we're holding hands, people will stare at us. Men especially will stare at us. My favorite was the three men in the parking lot at Home Depot. I'm like, “You have literally never seen a lesbian at the Home Depot? Come on, I feel like that's not true.” They just stare hard, and they're looking at you, and they're taking you in. “How dare you hold hands in the Home Depot.” It's a very visible judgment. I think Southerners will smile real, real pretty at you and then talk about you behind your back, so it's a different kind of judgment. But yeah, people will stare at us. 13 IO: Okay. I want to come back to Utah in a little bit, but back to you and your identity. How has your queerness changed the way you interact now that you're out with people, the world? RC: I find that I'm putting on a different costume now, so I'm very aware. When I was still trying to be somewhat in the closet, my hair was different. The hair never lies. That's what I have to say. I'll die on that hill. Then during the pandemic, I shaved half of my head and I was like, “I don't care what people say. I am stuck in a basement, and so who even cares.” Now when people look at me, there's no question. I leaned into it a little more, so I stopped wearing makeup. Now I have a full dad clothes wardrobe, and it's awesome. Oh, my god. The clothes are so much more comfortable. I don't feel the need to be pretty for anyone, you know what I mean? The fake pretty that you have to put on, whatever it is. I just, whatever. If I like it, I'm going to wear it. Also, because I'm in my forties, who cares anymore. You reach a point where you just stop caring what people think, and I have definitely reached that point where I stopped caring. It's very interesting, though, because my hair is kind of my signature thing, and has been for the past few years. People always comment on it. I had this woman at the gas station just today, and her little girl was like, “Mommy, that girl has a really cool Mohawk.” It was so cute. Just the cutest little things, but it's always a magnet that people comment on. When my spouse and I started dating, the first thing that they said to me was, “I love your hair.” Yay. My costume has changed. IO: How has your queer identity changed your relationship with your family, and did you feel the need to officially come out to them? RC: Yes. I had to come out three times to my parents. They just kept forgetting and I had to remind them. My mom would tell me, “I had a dream that you brought this nice young man home.” 14 I'm like, “Well, that's never going to happen.” But it's strained the relationships with my family. My parents and I have a very, very strange relationship, very surface level. Now, they did come to my wedding two months ago, which was a big deal. Then a month later, my mom calls me on the phone and tells me how she can't watch this show anymore because the guy's a freak because he's gay. I'm like, “Have you forgotten who you're speaking to?” So it has changed my relationships with them. What was the second part of that question? IO: You kind of answered both. If you felt the need to come out. RC: Yeah. I definitely did feel like I had to come out to them, for sure. It was interesting because when I came out to my extended family, my aunts and cousins a couple of years ago, I went down there for a visit and I hadn't seen them in like a decade. I just told them that I was gay and my aunt’s like, “Yeah, we knew that already. Congratulations. Good job.” Not long after that, my cousin, who's older than me and lives in another state, called me on the phone and she's like, “So guess what? I'm dating a girl.” I'm like, “Yay!” Everybody calls me and people come out to me now more, I guess. I have several queer nieces and nephews, and they all call me and tell me their coming-out stories and ask me what to do about the family and how to handle that. I'm like, “That's for you to decide, how you want to come out to people.” IO: You're a bit of a role model now. RC: I think so. It's nice to know that they feel like they can trust me, so that's good. IO: [To Faith] Did you have any questions? FC: I know that gender roles and sexuality were pretty strict when you were growing up. Changing your identity and being able to allow yourself to change those, how has that been, being able to subvert those things that were pretty harsh rules, even for your niece and nephews? 15 RC: A big part of it was being single for a very long time and living alone. There are no gender roles in the home if you're the only one in the home. I remember I went to my mom’s house, and I went to take the trash out to the bin outside, and she said, “What are you doing?” I'm like, “I'm taking the trash out that needs to be taken out.” “But that's your dad's job.” “But I can do it, so I'm going to lift this trash bag and take it to the bin. Who do you think takes the trash out in my house?” A big part of it was being single and putting off this sense of being a strong, independent woman. I was the only one of my sisters who finished college and had a career and didn't depend on a husband to support me and all of these things. That in and of itself was very important for my nephews and nieces especially to say, “Hey, we don't need a man to support us. We don't need to lean into relationships that we don't want just to have somebody to support us. We can do other things.” That was part of it. Then when I started dating my now spouse, they are non-binary, so gender roles again aren't really a thing in our home because it’s gender. We talk about it all the time. Gender is a very big conversation in our house all the time because of having a spouse who is non-binary, who grew up LDS. Married a man and was very much put into this ‘girl’ box growing up and then transitioned out of the church, came out as a lesbian, and then came out as non-binary/trans. It's become a bigger part of my mental landscape than it ever was before. I've learned things from them that I hadn't learned even as a lesbian woman. It's a whole different ball game. FC: How do you see gender differently now? It's a really broad question. RC: It's a big question, but it's such a construct when you really get down to the nitty gritty of it. It's such an arbitrary construct, and why do we care? Why does it matter? When I tell people I have three step kids, their first question’s, “Boys or girls,” right? 16 Does it matter? What if they're both? Come on. It's fun to play with the construct. Sometimes my spouse wants to wear a dress, but they very much have more of a masculine look to them now. It's a nice kind of juxtaposition with the dress and the masculine look, and we just have fun playing with it. We really love people not understanding us at all when they look at us. It was also a conversation I had to have with myself because I identify as a lesbian. How does that play into being in a relationship with someone who is non-binary? Does that mean that I have to call myself bisexual now? I'm like, “No, no, I don’t have to call myself anything that I don't want to call myself. I just am who I am, and I love who I love. Mind your business.” IO: All right. Last historical question before we move on. How did the marriage equality ruling affect you? That would have been right as you were coming out. RC: Yeah, it was. I was very excited about it, very happy about it, that it suddenly became a possibility. I didn't start dating women until after that. I've always dated towards the goal of getting married, so it was a big deal. To continue the historical aspect of that, when Roe v Wade was undone recently, we got really scared. It was right after we got married, the same month we got married, that they were talking about it. IO: Yeah. Right before the decision leaked. RC: We got scared. We're like, “What? How is this going to affect us?” We're still having to think about doing power of attorney and legal documents above and beyond the marriage, in case things fall apart in the wake of the Roe v Wade decision. So I got comfortable for a while and I thought, “Oh, this is done. We've got marriage equality, and this is the way it's going to be.” Who knew that we would start taking backwards steps? 17 IO: Yeah. I don't know if it's too sensitive to dig into those backwards steps, but what are you feeling about the future of same-sex marriage in the United States? RC: Hopefully, if they can pass the bills that they're trying to pass and make it an actual law, then it won't matter. As I understand it—I am no lawyer—but from reading about Utah and their whole thing with marriage equality, the state law would still be in Utah, that marriage equality would stand because of rulings that happened. But it's again to the courts, it's not on the books as an actual law. So conceivably, if the conservatives in Utah got excited, if the federal law fell, then it could still be taken away in Utah. So it needs to be a law on the books. I hope against hope that the Democrats stop sitting around on their behinds and actually get something done. But who knows? IO: I want to move forward talking about how you met your spouse. But first, I want to make sure I get pronouns correct. RC: It’s they/them. IO: They/them, okay. How did you meet them and how did your relationship develop? We love hearing stories about couples. RC: I kind of wish that we had a better story than ‘we met on Tinder,’ but we met on Tinder. I had been in this dating slump, all leading up to the pandemic. During the pandemic, obviously, it's really hard to date new people. I had just been on a string of first dates with a whole bunch of people right before the pandemic, and they were a bunch of crazies. I had just really attracted the crazies sometimes, and so I had given up on dating. I wasn't going to anymore. I was like, “I'm back to ‘I can be single’ forever.” Then it was December 2020, and it was cold, and I was tired and sad one night, so I got on Tinder and we just started talking. I knew within the first two conversations that they were the person that I was going to be with. I had a dream 18 about our wedding and all these things. We went on our first date at Farmington Station. We went to Twigs and then just walked around in the freezing cold of December 2020. It was like ten degrees outside. We literally walked around in tendegree weather for four hours and just talked and talked and talked. We were inseparable after that. It happened really, really quickly once we met in person. We dated all through 2021. We felt like we had to be careful because they do have three kids. I had a rule for myself that I didn't want to meet somebody's kids until the relationship was pretty established, and they had the same rule. We waited a few months to be introduced to the kids. It's a tricky situation because their dad is still in the church, and so they hear completely opposite things in the two households. It's been interesting. They didn't accept me right away, but we are growing closer, and it's getting easier, and they're good kids. So yeah, we just dated all through 2021. We got engaged in February of 2021, only after a few months, but we were engaged from February until we got married in May this year, 2022. IO: Congrats. Yeah, that's really recent. RC: It was, and it's all new. FC: How’s married life? RC: It's fun and it's interesting because we moved in together before we got married. We moved in in August, so we had been living together for six, seven months before we got married. Somehow there's still a shift after marriage. I don't understand it even now, but it's just a new level of commitment, so there are new issues that come up in a relationship. But it's going really well. I have fun. I feel like we live in a nice area where we live in an apartment complex, but they're all very accepting. All the people that work there, all the people that live there, I don't feel any sort of fear about being open where we live. So that's nice. 19 IO: We kind of talked about this already, but is there anything you'd like to say about how northern Utah is different than where you lived before, the South? RC: I don't know that I would have come out in the South. I would probably have just tried to do everything really quietly and in the closet, and meeting people would have been different completely. It's vastly different. I somehow feel safer in Utah than I did in Louisiana. IO: Are there any particular spaces or communities within Utah that you feel safe or unsafe? RC: Salt Lake, I feel really safe. Utah County, I felt very unsafe. We love going to Salt Lake and doing things there and going to see shows and stuff. But I often go to Utah County because my sister lives there and her kids live down there, and it's very obvious the difference. The percentages of Mormons versus non-Mormons in the two places are very different. I don't go to BYU, ever. IO: Yeah. How would you say the prevalence of the LDS Church has affected your experiences? RC: It definitely has. They have such a hold on the government of Utah that that's how it affects it. It's the fact that it doesn't matter. Salt Lake is this huge hub and it's very liberal and open and LGBTQ friendly, but that is the anomaly. It doesn't matter that there's so many people there because the government's always going to be controlled here by the church. That's just how it is, how it's been since before we were a state. IO: How about Ogden, specifically? RC: I do feel safe in Ogden. I love Ogden and I loved it since I first came here. It was my favorite. I just feel really safe in Ogden. I love going to 25th Street. I lived in Ogden for 15 years before we moved to Davis County. So I love Ogden. 20 IO: We had a big interview about Davis County yesterday, so I'd love to hear your take on Davis County. RC: Davis is a little different, but again, I feel safe there. I do. It's the Layton-Clearfield area, so it's not as LDS-prevalent as the Kaysville-Bountiful area. I don't feel unsafe in Layton or Clearfield at all, and we like it. That's probably where we're going to end up settling and getting a house eventually. It's nice out there. IO: Yeah. Faith, do you have any questions before we move on to the last section? FC: What is the difference in the culture of Ogden and northern Utah versus Salt Lake City? RC: I don’t know. I feel like Salt Lake has more cultural things and a lot of the indie movies go to Salt Lake and not here. I was driving down to Salt Lake a lot, to the Film Institute, a little tiny theater and going to see movies over there. You get a lot of the Broadway shows in Salt Lake that you may not get up here. Further northern Utah is more family based and there's more of a nightlife in Salt Lake. That kind of thing. FC: Is there differences within the queer community of Utah County versus Salt Lake City and Ogden? RC: Oh, I think so for sure, because everybody in Utah County is going to be in the closet. I dated this girl, God. She lived in Holladay, which isn't quite Utah County, but it's Holladay. She was still going to church and we would have dates, and then she would go teach the primary children the next morning. I'm like, “How do you do that? I can't.” I'm getting more involved in the queer community than I ever have been. So I'm going to Ogden Pride and things like that. We're trying to make friends in the community and stuff, and so my spouse has actually helped me with that because they go to Facebook groups and find people that are in our community. That's how 21 we found our accountant or things like that. We're trying to patronize businesses that are LGBTQ-run or owned, and so we are trying to build our community and our group. It's really interesting though, because I was in this book group that I started going to when I was still LDS and it was in my old neighborhood. All of the people that were in the group were LDS, except for one. Then after I came out and after El and I started dating—that's my spouse—another member of the group who had also been LDS came out and brought her girlfriend and I was like, “Yes, we're taking over the book group.” IO: There is one more question I have in this section, and I don't want to step on your spouse's story, but at what point did they come out? Was that during your relationship and did that affect you? RC: Somewhat. So they had already come out as gay. I was introduced to them as a lesbian, when they were still identifying as female and they had already left the church. Within a few months of us dating, they told me about being non-binary, they changed their name, we switched pronouns and that kind of thing. It's been this year-and-a-half long process as we've transitioned. Yes, it did affect me, and it did put a strain on our relationship. It probably would have been easier if they had already been through that transition when we started dating, but I don't regret it at all. I don't regret meeting them, I don't regret dating them, I don't regret any of the things. It's been a learning experience for me. But yeah, there was the transition during the beginning of the relationship. IO: All right. Last few questions. Do you have a gay icon or role model? RC: Oh, it's hard. I feel like I do. You are going to laugh at me: Anne Lister from the 1830s, Secret Diaries of Anne Lister. There was Gentleman Jack, the TV show that's based on these real diaries. She was incredible. Probably in today's society she would be trans, but in her time period before that was known to be a thing. She 22 just loved women and ended up having relationships, like full-on, almost marriage relationships with women who lived with her. I can't believe that happened in the 1800s. That's just fantastic to me. There's someone that I'm currently writing a book about because I am a writer, Maude Adams. She was an actress in the early 1900s. She was born in Salt Lake, and she was the first Peter Pan on Broadway in 1905 and played in like six J.M. Barrie plays during the years. The most famous actress of her time period. Nobody knows who she is now, but she was like Julia Roberts-level at the time. She was making over $1,000,000 a year back then, which was astronomical. She was gay. She didn't identify it that way, she didn't come out and say that, and she was deeply, deeply in the closet, because she had to be, and also because she came from a Mormon family. Her grandfather was best friends with Brigham Young and was a polygamist. It's crazy. The farmhouse where she was born is where Liberty Park is now. She lived with two women in her lifetime until they died and just was like madly in love with these women. Then she burned all of her papers, which is not helpful to me at all, but I've pieced together the story from all of these different places. She's my icon. I have a big poster of her in my apartment. She's gorgeous and amazing. IO: Since it sounds like you are putting out work into the world, is there anything you'd like to plug that you have done already that people can look at? RC: 100%. There's a book called A Light from the Ashes. It is on the shelf in this library. It is in the archives, in this library as well, and it's on Amazon. It was a dystopian novel that I wrote right before the pandemic, interestingly enough, and there is a gay character in there. So there you go. IO: Okay. What would you say to your younger self? It's always a difficult one. 23 RC: Oh God. Number one, it's going to get better. I was so depressed back then and so sad. Number two, just be yourself. Who you are is exactly who you need to be, and you don't need to be anybody else because you're the only person who can be who you are. You can bring that to the world, so just be who you are. 100%, completely, who you are, all the time. IO: Any advice you'd give to people who went through your same situation? RC: Leave the church sooner. Don't wait until you're 35, get out now while you can. I shouldn't say that, but it's true. Get out now. Don't let other people tell you who you are supposed to love. Don't let other people tell you who you're supposed to be. I had a church leader who told me that God would make me straight after I die, and I said, “No, thank you. I don't want that.” I would just say that if religion is telling you who you're supposed to be, that's not the religion you want to be part of. If religion is telling you how to be kind to your fellow human beings, go with that. I would consider myself probably Taoist/Buddhist now, but it's just more of a spiritual thing than, “I practice my religion.” I do my tai chi and go on nature walks. If any government or religion or any group is telling you who you have to be, don't listen to that. That's my advice. IO: Anything at all you'd like to add or share to your story? RC: I am very grateful that I have had the opportunities that I have, that I have learned what I did. Pulled myself together enough to get out and create a life that I wanted, that looked the way that I wanted it to look. I'm very happily married with three step kids that I love, and I don't regret any of it. I'm so extremely happy and content. IO: Perfect. Would you be willing, if this project continues or revives, to be interviewed again in five or ten years? RC: Yeah, absolutely. 24 IO: Perfect, unless you have anything else to say, Faith. All right, I think we are good. Thank you for coming. RC: Hey, thanks, guys. Appreciate it. 25