Episode 217 (Transcript) Following Your Conscience | A Conversation with Laurie Lee Hall

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Rebecca Graham, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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LH: I love the fact that apart from being a former church employee and a church leader, and apart from being transgender and taking a walk, a journey of transgender transition, apart from those aspects of the story, one of the underlying currents in the story is we're all entitled to receive personal revelation.

LH: And we have the right to take that power. And even if it says to us something that's different from how the authorities over us, the power structures over us, may be thinking, if it's the thing that's right and true for ourselves, we are benefited when we follow the dictates of our own conscience._____

SH: Hi, I'm Susan Hinkley. CW: And I am Cynthia Winward. SH: And this is At Last she Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things and the title of today's episode is “Following Your Conscience, A Conversation with Laurie Lee Hall.” Welcome, Laurie Lee. 

LH: Hi. It's so great to be with you. 

CW:: Yay!

LH: Yay!

CW: Happy to have you.

SH: Our listeners might recognize your name from your book that came out, I don't know, maybe in November, is that right? LH: That's right. SH: Okay. The book is “Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman.” So, needless to say, you have a fascinating, and I think important story, and we're excited that you're willing to come and talk about your experiences with us today.

LH: I'm delighted to be maybe one of the first, if not the first transgender woman on At Last She Said it. 

SH: You absolutely are. CW: Mhmm.

LH: And I'm so excited that you would welcome me into this space. 

CW: Yeah. SH: Well, we really feel like it's a privilege to have you, so thank you so much for agreeing to not only tell your story in a book, which I think is so important, but agree to come on and talk a little bit more intimately with us about your experiences. We'd really like to start with a quick intro about you. Anything that you would want our listeners to know, maybe just some of the boring details that won't come up as we discuss some of the weightier matters of your story today.

LH: Great. So, just as a matter of background, a lot of Latter-day Saints know me as having been a chief architect for the church in the Temple Design and Construction program for about 15, 20 years. And some will know that while working for the church I was also serving as a bishop and a stake president, and reached the point where it became necessary for me to accept and ultimately connect with my gender identity as being female.

And in the memoir, I describe a lot of interactions with leaders of the church on that subject and how that eventually led to my leaving church employment and how that all went down. As well as attempting to live for about nine months as a sister in the Mormon church before I was excommunicated.

CW: Mhmm. 

LH: At a time when there weren't a lot of other trans people being excommunicated. There's some complications associated with that. We do talk about complicated things here. 

SH: Yes, yes.

LH: And we'll get in more to that, perhaps, but since I've been a member of the leadership of Affirmation, LGBTQ Mormon families and friends, running things worldwide for Affirmation for a number of years, and have moved from Utah to Kentucky where I feel a little more safe and accepted, amazingly, although it's a very red state. CW: Mhmm. 

SL: But the happy story, the happy ending of my book, is that I'm still here. I'm surviving and thriving and I have a happy ending 'cause I can speak to these things in a time when it's so important that our voices be shared, not just in print, but in venues such as this.

CW: [whispering] Yeah. LH: It's my obligation and privilege to use my voice to humanize the experience of having gender identity and gender dysphoria contrary to my sex assigned at birth. 

CW: As you were speaking, Laurie Lee, when your book first came out in the fall…Like, I wanted to have you on immediately, and now I'm really glad it didn't work out immediately. I'm really glad with everything that's going on in the United States right now, I think your story is more important than ever. So I'm really glad that we're having this conversation when we are, in March. 'Cause dang, it's a hard time and I'm so sorry for everything that is going on and, yeah. So thank you. I'm glad you're here now. 

LH: I agree with you, Cynthia, that the timing is important. It's hard to say what will come [00:05:00] in the several months before us throughout the rest of this year. SH: Right. LH: But a careful read of my preface, which I wrote in August of last year, indicates that where we are now was exactly what I was afraid of. And exactly what I was alluding to. And it might've sounded a little bit hollow, had things gone differently in the federal elections in November. But given the fact that they are where they are, it feels like the impressions of the spirit I was feeling to write…CW: [whispering] Yeah. LH: …about the things that I did, and to, just anxiously push my story into print, knowing that it would be needed. And now seeing that it's needed so much more than I could have imagined. I mean, we are in pretty much the worst case scenario that I could have imagined. 

CW: Yeah. 

SH: Right. 

LH: For my community. 

SH: Well, thank you for all of that. I feel like your introduction is perfect to give context for the conversation that we wanna have now.

And I'm going to turn the rest of the conversation over to Cynthia to lead. She is in charge of the discussion today, so take it away, Cynthia. Let's get to it. 

CW: Cool. Before we jump into our questions Laurie Lee, you had mentioned that you do work with Affirmation and I hope our audience will indulge me. I'm gonna tell a quick personal story. You might know the story, Laurie Lee, that six years ago you asked my husband if he would be the treasurer, that's the word [laughing]. If he would be the treasurer for Affirmation. And it was interesting because he was just kind of starting his journey into allyship. I had become an ally, I had been volunteering at the Encircle house and he was looking for ways.

And so your asking him that, was such an answer to prayers because… [choking up] sorry, I don't cry on this podcast, but our daughter ended up coming out as gay four months later. And it was just such a tender moment for me how you had followed the spirit and knew that this was something that would kind of just fold my husband in very quickly into allyship.

And it's meant the world to him, it’s meant the world to me as our family has changed, and I just wanna thank you for that personally. So thank you. Thank you.