Oral History Program Laura Jensen Interviewed by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles 10 October 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Laura Jensen Interviewed by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles 10 October 2024 Copyright © 2024 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: Jensen, Laura, an oral history by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles, 10 October 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA), Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Laura Jensen, conducted on October 10, 2022 in Weber State University’s Stewart Library by Grant Ulrigg and Jim Miles. Laura touches on her experiences growing up in an LDS family in Utah. They discuss their journey of exploring both their queer and religious identities while also navigating a traditionally LDS marriage. GU: All right, today is October 10, about 10:15. We're here in the Stewart Library in room 333. This is Grant conducting the interview. We're here with Laura Jensen, and the videographer is Jim Miles. Then introductions: my name is Grant, as I've already stated. My pronouns are he/him and I identify as a queer man. JM: My name is Jim Miles. I identify also he/him and generally queer. LJ: My name is Laura. I go by they/she and I identify as a lesbian. I'm also genderfluid or genderqueer. GU: Perfect, so let's start off with the beginning. When and where were you born? LJ: I was born in Pleasant Grove, Utah, right outside American Fork, August 13, 1996. GU: Growing up, what was the family dynamic? LJ: I'm the oldest of four and there is a big age gap between me and my siblings. A lot of the time, I kind of felt like there was me, and then there was another family of kids. I did kind of have to step in as the third parent or the second parent a lot of the time. I grew up in a very religious Christian household. GU: Okay. Do you mind breaking down the age difference with all your siblings? LJ: So there's a four-year age gap between me and my next sibling, which is my sister. Then there's a two-year age gap between her and the next one, who is also queer. Then my last sibling, so it's four, five, six, eight, I think is the biggest age gap. GU: Okay. Is your last one a brother, sister? LJ: A brother. 1 GU: A brother, okay. So it's you, she/they, and then your sister, she/her, and then your second sibling is… LJ: There's some questioning. GU: Still questioning? LJ: Any pronouns. GU: Just any pronouns. And then… LJ: My brother, yeah. GU: Okay, cool. Growing up, what were you taught about sex? LJ: Like expression or like with other people? Or just anything? GU: Just kind of anything. Does anything stand out to you? LJ: Okay. I think the biggest thing is that growing up, I only kind of knew that there was something other than straight. I knew that there was something called ‘gay’, but we didn't talk about it. My mom told me that people did it, and then we got sad. I very vividly remember—because my parents would let me watch Special Victims Unit as a kid, and one of the episodes had a lesbian couple. I remember feeling something seeing these two girls being together. Then when I asked my mom, that was her explanation of like, “Some people feel that way, but it makes God sad when they do it. You don't want to make God sad,” and that stuck with me like until now. I can remember everything about that moment. As far as like sex goes, my mom was actually really good about explaining very scientifically, like, “This is how people make kids, and this is what happens when you get married,” because, you know, Christian—that element was there. But I didn't know anything about, like, gender identity. I didn't know anything about different sexualities other than straight and gay until I left home for college. GU: Okay. Does that kind of go also for gender norms? What were you taught when it came to that? 2 LJ: It's interesting. Until I was eight—I was LDS and eight is when you get baptized. Until eight, I felt like that was my most genuine self. Then when you get baptized, you're told that you have to make a covenant with God and you have to start on your life path. For binary women, it's to get married, to have kids, to be a wife. I remember there was just this very big shift in how I presented myself and how I was. Even my mom says that eight years old was when I went from being super outgoing and this little sunshine kid to just, like, very reserved and quiet and almost depressed. I didn't put that all together until very recently, but I remember I wanted to go to the Pinewood Derby, which is that wood car race that the Boy Scouts did. I remember my dad being like, “Oh, you can't do that. You're a girl.” It destroyed my world. I was like five and I was like, “What do you mean I can't do it?” Then just like throughout my whole life, it was just like, “What do you mean I can't do that?” Lots and lots of gender norms and stuff, and it just didn't make sense to my little kid brain why I couldn't do these things. GU: I was going to ask, and you kind of touched on it, but in case there was one before that, when were you first really introduced to anything queer? LJ: College. GU: College? LJ: Yes, so I went to SUU originally. I graduated back in 2014. I went to SUU because I wanted to be far enough away from my family to kind of live on my own, so it was like 3 hours away. My roommate was bisexual, and that was the first time I was like, “Wait, you can do that? Like, that's okay?” Because for a while I actually identified as bisexual because I felt that that was safer. I actually did end up getting an LDS temple marriage that I just recently got out of. For a while I was like, “Oh, I can be bisexual. I can still be a good Mormon. I can still fulfill all my parents’ wants and 3 needs and be myself.” But college was my first real introduction to other queer people. GU: Okay. Do you mind going into that temple marriage and kind of how that [happened]? LJ: Yeah, for sure. I got married at 19. I went to college, found out that there was more, and then got engaged and got married. It was a very Mormon wedding, LDS wedding, where it was just like we met, and then a week later we got engaged, and then ten months later we got married. At the time I was like, “Yeah, I can marry this guy. He's not as bad as the others,” because a lot of what I was taught growing up is to marry someone that you're okay with, and then you'll fall in love with them later, which was very hard. So we got married. We both left the church together about two years into our marriage. He was ready to leave before I was, but he didn't want to drag me out ‘cause I was very, very devout. Then we left together, and that's when I kind of fully came out or identified as bisexual. As time went on, I started learning about gender identity and that it's more of like a scale instead of just like one or the other. I was like, “Wow, I really like that.” He had a really hard time with that because he is cishet, so [he] identifies with the gender he was born with, is straight, all of that. That ultimately is what led to us deciding to get divorced. He kind of figured out that I was lesbian instead of bisexual before I did, because my whole life, it was all about getting married, having a family, and I didn't want to fail that. So I was clinging to this identity that allowed me to be both. I'm not trying at all to invalidate bisexuality. I think it's a very valid identity. But my reasoning wasn't right for that label, and so we just finished getting divorced this month. It got really messy and I'm dating a woman now. Do you have any other questions about that? GU: I don't. [To Jim] Do you? 4 JM: I do, actually. You mentioned the gender identity portion of it was hard. Was he supportive of your sexual identity? You mentioned he kind of figured out you’re lesbian. Was he okay with your sexual identity and not your gender identity? LJ: Yeah. So I was like, “I think I'm bisexual. I really like women and men.” He was like, “Okay, cool.” But later, when we actually broke up, he kind of was like, “Yeah, when you told me it was bisexual, I knew that wasn't quite it.” He describes it as, like, he saw a relationship timer. Once I had said that, he's like, “Now she's going to figure it out.” As far as gender identity, like I said, genderqueer—I do fall under the trans umbrella just because I don't identify completely with the gender I was assigned at birth. He did have a hard time because I started presenting a little bit more masculine. I cut my hair. I wasn't wearing as much makeup. I was wearing more masculine clothes. That is, I think, what he had the hardest time with. GU: Yeah. I guess we'll jump back to childhood after that. Well, since we're on the topic, you also mentioned you grew up LDS. Since you were LDS, I know divorce is a hard topic in circles like that, especially with, I noticed, some gender norms associated with divorce. Have you seen any issues because of that? LJ: I think more so with his family than mine. I think the fact that I'm gay being the reason we broke up, his family is having a very hard time swallowing just because that it makes it very easy to make me the bad guy; where it was just like, if we stayed together, it just was miserable, and it would have continued to be miserable for both of us. My family, it's interesting because my mom was like, “I understand that you don't choose to be gay.” But at the same time, she's like, “I think it's weird that you're dating someone in the process of getting divorced because you're still married to him.” I don't understand that because we're not attracted to each other. There's nothing there tying us together other than the social construct of what a 5 man and woman marriage looks like. So my mom’s been having a hard time dealing with the fact that I'm dating someone that is a woman and that it's a serious relationship. But as far as the divorce goes, my family's actually been really, really supportive, which has been nice. GU: Okay. So let's back up a little bit. When did you know or feel that you were different? I know you kind of touched on it a little bit, like the gender norms. When you were early-on, like when you were like, “Huh, that's not exactly the same for me.” LJ: Yeah. Really early. Like I said, I have that very vivid, very vivid memory of seeing two girls kiss on TV and feeling something, but not knowing what it was. GU: How old were you at that point? Do you remember? LJ: I was a single kid, so I was between the ages of three and four. GU: Three and four? Okay. LJ: Then I remember my favorite Disney movie growing up was Mulan. I really liked the whole arc of her breaking all the gender norms and going forward and doing things that people said she couldn't do because she was a woman. Growing up, whenever a female character would, like, cut her hair to show a transition into a new person and a new life, that always spoke to me. Growing up, I never cut my hair. I had like three feet of very, very long blond hair, and that was like my identity. I was the girl with the really long, pretty hair. Then I got to college and I cut it, and that was a very symbolic thing for me. I cut it short when I started going into my gender identity, and that all started with Mulan back when I was two, three, four. Growing up, I just had all these experiences where I had a lot of very close friends who were girls, and I would always get sad when they were dating someone, but I didn't understand why. I was like, “Oh, they're dating someone. I 6 wish I could take care of them that way. Anyway, that's just friendship.” Then I was just kind of… “It's not right.” GU: Besides that episode that you saw, the lesbian couple, were there any other outside factors that you can see pinpoint through elementary, middle school? LJ: I don't think so. Those are like the two big things where I looked and it was like looking in the mirror. I saw a reflection of what I wanted, I just didn't quite know what it was called. Other than that, a lot of it was just me experiencing these things and not knowing how to label them or how to talk about them. GU: [To Jim] Do you have any questions for everyone? JM: If we can just touch on elementary a little longer. You've mentioned kind of having noticed some feelings that were not considered normal. Did you feel any other distance? That can be kind of a common thing: people feel like they're not quite the same as other people. Do you feel any differences other than that? LJ: Well, in addition to being queer, I'm also autistic and I have ADHD, so yes. But I'm not sure if that was all related to being queer, or if it was like everything else on top of it. I do remember my first crush was this girl in my elementary school class. I vividly remember I really liked her brown curly hair. She had great curly hair. I remember just fiercely wanting to make her happy. That's what I wanted. I wanted to make her happy. I wanted to see her laugh and smile. Then I was moving and I was going to a different school, and for some reason, not being able to see her was like the hardest part. I remember she gave me one of those cheap printed pencils they give you in school that had like a little plastic wrap on it. I never used that pencil, and I kept it for years afterwards. I remember I lost it, and I was so sad. And I was like, “Man, that must have been a really good friend. Anyway...” But looking 7 back, it's like, obviously that was like a crush. I wanted to essentially be their girlfriend, and I wanted to make their life happy again and be that person. JM: You did mention these feelings of ADHD or autism and not knowing how much it kind of ties with sexuality. Obviously, anything you want to talk about today is going to be important, it's going to form… This is an oral history of your life, not necessarily just sexuality, so anything you want to talk about is always good. GU: Let's move to middle school. Are there any significant points of middle school that you can pinpoint, whether it was queer or not? LJ: Probably the biggest one is that my close friend group is now all queer. Once we all left high school and started living our own lives, every single one of them is queer, and it started really quick. JM: Is that they're currently queer or they were? LJ: They are. We were not… okay, we were, but we didn't identify as such. In middle school, we called ourselves ‘The Leftovers’ because we were just these kids from every clique that kind of came together. We didn't really know why at the time that we had this bond. I think two people out of this group of like 15 people were actively out as gay in high school, and the rest of us were just like, oh, super supportive. “We're here for you; don't really know why.” Then we graduate, we go on; later in life, we'll look back like, “Oh, okay, that's why.” GU: So this group of—you said 15—started in middle school, and you guys are all pretty much still friends to this day? LJ: I mean, we all keep in touch. We're not super close. We don't do meetups or anything, but we check up on each other. JM: It's kind of cool to see the evolution of a friend group like that. So that kind of tied into high school. Anything that you want to…? 8 LJ: In high school, I felt this push to distance myself from my friend group, actually. Junior high was kind of like the Wild West; I was friends with whoever. Then my mom stepped in and was like, “I don't want you to hang out with, like A, B, and C.” I was like, “Why?” She was like, “I don't really know. I just don't really like the vibes.” So in high school, I actually had some very hard cutoffs with some people, and I went into more like what was expected. Very, very LDS-centered friend groups, or we went to the Temple all the time and Institute together. It wasn't as much… Like in junior high, it was just gathering with your friends and feeling safe. Now it was like I had to put on a show of a person. Then near the end of high school, I started to kind of rebuild those connections of the people I had cut off. Again, I wasn't really sure why. I was just like, “I feel like this person needs to be in my life.” I liked how safe I felt with them. Later, “Oh, we're all queer, that's why.” JM: So you graduate high school, you get married at 19. Can you kind of explain the significant events leading up to your realization that you were bisexual, and then into accepting that you were a lesbian? LJ: So I mentioned my first year of college, I had a roommate who was bisexual. I definitely had a very big crush on her to the point where I think I was in love with her. But I never acted on any of that because that wasn't okay. Also, I got engaged to a man, so obviously that was a big thing, leaving college because I wasn't able to go back after I got married. Looking back at that relationship with her, it was just very sad and very regretful, just like back in elementary school when she gave me the pencil and I never saw her again. Just since she was bisexual, she was someone I cared about; I started learning more about the bisexual community, and in turn, more about the queer community. I just felt like I had found more of a home. Then with my husband and I leaving the church, suddenly it was this open world: all 9 of these new identities and things that were suddenly okay for me to do. That's when I was like, “Okay, I'm going to try out saying that I'm bisexual, see how that feels.” I was like, “Wow, this is great.” Then I had told my husband, I was like, “I think I want to identify as bisexual. I want to tell people.” At the time, he was like, “That's great. I support you.” He talked a lot about how he regretted that I wasn't able to date more people before we got married, because I had dated one other man and then I dated him and got engaged. That was like the epitome of my dating experience. As our relationship just got longer and longer, like I said, he had seen the relationship timer, and I was just like, “No, we’ll make it work. This is going to be great. We're going to keep going.” We were married for six years, and as we came up our sixth year, he's like, “Maybe we should look into trying polyamory,” which is when you open your marriage and you have multiple partners. His initial reasoning was that he felt bad that I had never been with a girl. But when we finally broke up, he admitted that he was trying to push me towards realizing that I wasn't bisexual, that I was a lesbian, so that I would end the relationship. But I just kept digging my heels in like, “Nope, we're going to make it work. We'll try polyamory.” We spent months doing all this research, getting into polyamorous communities online and asking questions, reading books about attachment issues. Then I started dating a mutual friend that I had a crush on ever since we met, and then that's when it all really fell apart. He's like, “You know what? We can't do this anymore. I don't think you're bisexual. I think you're gay, and I think that we should stop our romantic relationship.” That led to, “I think we should just get divorced.” 10 I was fighting it till the very end because I was like, “Oh, this is the one thing I'm doing right is this marriage.” It wasn't because I had those romantic feelings for him, it was because I just really didn't want that failure looming over me. GU: It does sound like he was trying to be supportive as much as he could. LJ: Yes. GU: As soon as you accepted his support, it kind of backtracked a little bit. LJ: Yeah, he has his own side where he's got some mental things that came into play that made it a lot harder for him. Then his family is not supportive of all of this, which also makes it very hard. We did have a genuine friendship for a while, and there was that genuine, like, “I'm trying to make your life better and I want you to have that better life.” GU: [To Jim] Do you have any questions? JM: Yeah. I do want to note that as we start being a little more emotional, you can take a break [if you need]. Perhaps the next question. You mentioned that he was kind of pushing you, and it's really common for people who are not in the community to ask, “Did you feel like you were pushed to identify a certain way?” Are there any feelings of negativity towards his actions at that time? LJ: I mean, there is negativity towards those actions, but not concerning this. He used money as a love language, which I don't really like where it was like, “Oh, I need to show this person that I care about them. I'm going to spend a lot of money and buy them these very big useful things.” So there are hard feelings towards that, but I really think that he was trying to do the best he could with the information that he had, and he was not nearly as involved in like queer circles as I was. I think he was just trying to piece together how to handle a failing marriage and losing a wife, which is like the big thing. His family supported [him] while also trying to make sure that I was happy. 11 GU: I do have a follow-up to that. If you would have accepted the support sooner, do you think maybe there would have been a different outcome? LJ: I don't know. A lot of the fights and the part of the divorce that went south was more about our conflicting values as people, not so much the queer aspect. I do think even if we had broken up earlier or later, whatever, it still would have kind of ended in a big hot mess. JM: I do have a question. GU: Feel free. JM: Taking on a little bit of a different track. You mentioned that he was being supportive and you did feel kind of like his sister. Did you have a broader support system outside of that? You mentioned you wanted to be an ally and you remember that community early on. But did you have kind of a reciprocal relationship? LJ: Yeah. So just as all my friends in high school turned out to be queer, everywhere I went, I would just have these friends like, “Oh, you're also…? Oh, okay, cool.” Then with COVID, I had a very big boom of an online community because that's kind of all you had for a while. I had very big support from friends across the world, from friends in my community, all of that. GU: Okay. Now that you have accepted, identified as being queer, has that changed how you interact with people in the world? LJ: Yes, I think so. GU: How so? LJ: I kind of talked about how I was like, “Oh, I can do both. I can tell people I'm attracted to women but still be married to a man. I'm okay.” Part of the hard part of the divorce was that he was this big 6’4” white guy with blond hair and a beard. He was very safe. If I was out in public with him and I told people as bisexual, I was safe because there was this big guy next to me. Identifying as lesbian was both a 12 breath of relief and an “Oh, shit.” My girlfriend said that it was okay to mention that she is also trans, and so on top of identifying as lesbian dating a woman in Utah, I'm also dating a trans woman, which is kind of like a triple homicide and a queer danger. So I went from being in this very safe place where I could kind of dabble in telling people that I was queer to it becoming like very front and center. If you tell people you're queer, there's two ways it could go. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of conversations where I meet a new group of people and I'm like, “Well, you guys are going to hear a lot of stories about my roommates. You're not going to know that one of them is my girlfriend.” It can be very mentally exhausting to be in a social space and trying to be like, “Okay, can I tell people that I have a girlfriend? Do I need to tell them that I'm living with two friends?” Stuff like that. GU: Kind of bouncing off that—have you noticed that within these interactions, not only are you debating what you're saying, but have you noticed… How do I explain it? I've noticed, like since I've been out, I let people talk first and I also make myself small in new spaces until I get a kind of a feel. LJ: Yeah. GU: Has your body language and things besides your speech also changed since you've come out? LJ: Yes, but I think I've actually become more confident because it's like, “All right, this is for real. This is what I've been wanting my whole life. I'm going to go for it.” Obviously, there are those social situations where I'm like, “Oh, this is not the safest place to be, so I'll have to put on a different hat for this conversation.” As far as body language and all of that, my friends have actually said that I have become—I talked about how before I was eight, I was like this sunshine kid. I was just bright and happy and all over the place. My friends have said that that's kind of who they see me as now. So like, yes, it's changed, but kind of in a good way. 13 JM: Question. You mentioned your terminology was ‘triple homicide.’ I think this is a good supplementary question we like to ask people: what does the word discrimination mean to you, in the general sense? These negative interactions, [if you] have anything relevant. LJ: Discrimination. Now again, I don't have that kind of shield. I was like, “Oh, this could be a life-ruining situation if I don't play my cards right.” Luckily, at my workplace, my boss is gay, so it's very queer-friendly there. But I'm actually looking for a new job; I want to become a teacher and it's like, oof! I got to be very careful how I play the next few years of my life so that it can end up somewhere good. JM: So we can jump to another separate question. Did you feel the need to traditionally come out? And if so, how did that go? LJ: I mean, I do have a pretty big friend social media presence. Like, I update my friends about my life through Facebook and I like telling people what's going on in my life just so that if we reconnect, there's no surprises, I guess. I didn't really feel the need to come out more than once because I have all these things leading up. Then it was like, “Oh my God, I can do it,” because coming out as bisexual, like I said, it was good, but it wasn't quite the right fit. GU: There's a question I am curious about. You said when you were about three or four years old, you talked about that episode with the lesbian couple. Since then, have you seen any representation growing up that… not necessarily that you identified with, but it's like, “Oh, you know, that's a gay couple,” or, “That's a gay person. It's nice to see that.” LJ: Again, not really until I went to college. It just wasn't something that I was given the tools to recognize. I look back and I see, “Oh, that character was definitely queercoded.” But as a kid, I was like, “Okay, it's media. I'm watching it.” I wasn't given the words or the knowledge to know what I was looking at, if that makes sense. 14 GU: Looking back, do you have any examples off the top of your head? LJ: As far as gender expression goes, there was Mulan; another really big one was Atlantis and Treasure Planet. Atlantis was a big one, not only because it showed women as very diverse and strong and powerful in all these different areas, but it was like, “Oh, wow, all these women are so beautiful.” I would just try to shove it down and be like, “It's because I want to be like them. It's not because I like them.” I wasn't really allowed to watch cartoons growing up. My parents didn't like cartoons, which is funny because they had me watching other stuff, like I mentioned. So a lot of it wasn't really… I don't know. I don't really have any vivid memories other than that time when I felt like I was my genuine self because the rest of the time, I was just desperately trying to be a devout follower of God. That kind of took over everything. I do remember I lived in Cedar City for a while and I worked at a pet store, and there was this gay couple that would come in. I just remember when they came in, it felt like the room lit up and I just felt this great feeling. When you're LDS, they tell you that's the Holy Spirit. I was like, “Why do I always feel this around queer couples? What is that about?” That was actually one of the big moments when I was like, “Maybe I should look behind the curtain of the church I'm devoting my life to,” because it was like, “I feel so at home and great when I'm around other queer people and their lives. What the heck is that about?” GU: Touching back on religion, I know you said that you and your husband left the church. Now, are you spiritual or religious in any way? If you don’t mind me asking about that. LJ: Yeah, I'm actually Hellenistic, which is a Greek religion. I follow Artemis, which is very on par for being a lesbian. But after I left the church, I went into witchcraft for a while, and then I became more socially aware of like, “Oh, wait, a lot of this 15 witchcraft is also kind of like Mormonism, where they just kind of picked from other cultures, and they're like, ‘This is this is true now.’” So I did that for a while, and then I was like, “Oh, I don't like that.” But I always have had this very strong connection with nature, and so I feel like there's something there. Right now, doing Hellenism and worshiping Artemis has been like a good thing. I'm not nearly as… I don't want to say consumed, but it's not nearly as big of a thing in my life as being LDS was, because being LDS was like, “You're LDS first, and then anything else you identify as has to fall in that category.” Being Hellenistic, it's like, I am myself first and also this is part of who I am and what I do. GU: [To Jim] Any questions? JM: I think mine aren't quite where we are [yet]. Go ahead and keep on. GU: Well, I mean, I'm kind of doing the wrap up questions. JM: Then yes. You have mentioned that obviously you were LDS, and that's been kind of a large presence in your life. In Utah, that's a large presence for everyone. Have you experienced things that you feel like you wouldn't have experienced elsewhere in the country? [Things] that are very specific to the queer experience within Utah? LJ: Hmm. I don't know, because a lot of queer people who grow up in very strict Christian households, we tend to have a lot of the same experiences. I think the biggest thing for being LDS was just the amount of discrimination between what they would tell the women and what they would tell the men. They call it like your ‘shelf’, and when your shelf breaks, that's when you leave the church. Everything you find out is a weight on that shelf. For me, one of the big weights was my husband. My ex-husband was told that if he was faithful, when he died and went to the top tier of heaven, he would get to have multiple wives. I was told growing up that we didn't do that anymore, and that if I was faithful and I was good, I would get to the top tier of heaven and it would just be me and my husband. After that, it was 16 just like more and more things because he was a missionary and everything. He knew his stuff because he had to try to convert people, and he would just be like, “Did they tell you this?” He’s like, “Yeah, we weren't allowed to tell people we were converting this, this, this, and this.” I don't know if the discrepancy of information itself is unique, but I think the polygamy is pretty LDS. GU: How has Northern Utah been different from the other places you lived? You mentioned the American Fork area. LJ: Ogden has definitely been the safest place to be queer. I feel like there are a lot more resources here. There's a lot more queer people here than growing up in Utah Valley, and when I go back to visit, it's just church and that's it. Cedar City was pretty similar because it's just so small. It's just a college town. You're either a college student or you're an old religious person that's lived there their whole lives. There wasn't really a lot there either. Ogden has also been the biggest city that I've lived in, and in comparison to the rest of the United States, it's not that big. But just living in a bigger city and seeing how much more diversity there is has been very, very eye opening and very nice. GU: Well, is there anything that you would like to say to your younger self? LJ: Oof. GU: So much, maybe? LJ: So much. I think to that little kid, I would love to give them more resources and access so that they could discover more on their own and let them know that these things that are rubbing you the wrong way, you're not crazy. You're not missing. To my teenage self, just remember not to lose yourself in trying to be there for other people. GU: To kind of double down, what would you tell someone who was in a similar situation that you were in? What would you tell them? 17 LJ: It's okay to have questions, and it's okay to feel like you're in the wrong space. It's going to be very scary to pull back the curtain and look at why you're feeling that way, but it's much better than just living forever wondering what's going on and feeling confused and lost. GU: Is there anything that we missed you want to talk about? We try to make our questions as broad as possible. LJ: No, they're pretty good. I don't think so. GU: Okay. Who's your gay icon or role model? LJ: Oof, this is so bad because I can't remember their name. The actor for Jim from Our Flag Means Death. Additionally, not necessarily an icon, but someone who really helps me on my gender identity journey is Halsey. A big part of that is that they go by they/them, but also they are very feminine-presenting, and they were pregnant and had a child and talked about and released songs about how they were still nonbinary while doing all of these things that society labels as female, feminine. That was really helpful for me on my gender identity journey. But also, it was amazing to see a non-binary actor playing a non-binary character who was blatantly non-binary. The whole film is awesome. JM: Did you find their name? GU: Yes. Jim was played by Vico Ortiz. LJ: Yeah, Vico Ortiz. JM: It's a great show. I enjoy it. GU: I'll have to check it out. I've never seen it. LJ: Oh, it's great. GU: All right. So, honestly, anything else that you want to even just say? Tell the world? LJ: I don't think so. JM: You'd like to have it public, I know you have your social media to do it on, but… 18 LJ: Yeah, it's a little different when you're doing an interview. GU: All right. We'll wrap that up, then. 19