Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

2005 Affirmation Writing Awards Contest Winners

October 2005

The Affirmation Writing Awards Contest recognizes non-fiction writing, in any form, on subjects of importance to the GLBTI Mormon community. This was the sixth year of the Contest. This year's entries were read by five judges: Lavina Fielding Anderson, John-Charles Duffy, Cindy LeFevre, D. Michael Quinn, and Kathryn Steffensen.

First Place: Connell O'Donovan, "Losing My Religion: How I Baked a Custard Pudding and Lost My Belief in Mormonism." Both poignant and witty, this well-crafted personal essay recounts the author's coming out to his ward in Salt Lake City in the late 1980s. Shortly after being placed on probation by a church court, the author enters--and wins--the ward's dessert-making contest with a flamboyantly presented custard pudding baked in a pumpkin. Winning the contest, he wryly remarks, "provided a sure sign of my moral depravity and my gender treachery" and sets in motion his final separation from his church community. Through a dream some months later, the author becomes convinced that trying to live within the restrictions imposed by his church leaders would be like starving his soul to death when an expansive spiritual feast is laid out, waiting to be enjoyed.

Second Place: Tracy Kriese, "Tumbling Down." The title refers to the tumbling walls of Jericho, which become a symbol for the "walls of anger and activism" the author has built around her own pain as the mother of a gay Mormon son. Attending a rally at the Texas state capitol, listening to another mother speak of her gay daughter's suicide, the author recalls the hours she spent sitting outside her son's door at night, fearful that he "might take that desperate step he seemed to long for more and more," vigilant but helpless as her son struggled with a despair she could not understand. With every page of this essay, the writing becomes more emotionally intense, as the walls the author has built around her pain crumble and fall, culminating in a deeply moving exchange of gratitude and compassion between mother and son.

Third Place: Brenton Thompson, "A Queer Pioneer's Perilous Journey." This essay begins as a familiar kind of conversion story, telling how, as a teenager, the author gained a testimony of the restored gospel and joined the Church. Not until almost halfway through do we learn that the author secretly struggles with the knowledge that he has a "full-fledged high school crush" on the young LDS man who introduced him to the Church. After confessing his struggles to his bishop, the author is denied the opportunity to serve a mission and subsequently slides away from the Church into a life of "serial monogamy" and substance abuse. His journey to sobriety puts him back in touch with the Father in Heaven he came to know through his conversion to Mormonism. "I have begun to think of myself as a Queer Pioneer," the author writes. "I plan on returning to my Heavenly Father one day, in all of my gay glory."

Honorable Mention: Ren Kelley, "My Experience, Strength and Hope." Many coming out stories are written by people who, by the time they write, have a strong sense of who they are and what they believe. This essay, by contrast, captures the experience of someone still in the process of seeking answers, not yet certain how to define herself or where she fits. The author, and her essay, wander: to an MCC pastor, a therapist, a GLBT support group, Evergreen. When the author does find answers, they come in a thoroughly Mormon way: through prayer, scripture study, and personal promptings. "It doesn't matter that the revelation I received for my life doesn't make sense in the context of the LDS gospel," the author writer. "The birth of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in an animal bin doesn't make sense either, yet this hasn't hindered my faith in him."