Ben Jarvis
Paul Mortensen helped me feel at home with myself and to embrace both my Mormon and gay sides. In the beginning, I thought those two aspects of my life were forces pulling me in opposite directions. Paul helped me understand that both identities were important and that they were complementary: I did not have to choose one over the other.
He felt firmly that you could be a Mormon without letting church leaders tell you how to do it or that you were on the wrong path. He was the original guru of understanding and accepting your own identity as a gay Mormon. He always understood the purpose of Affirmation wasn’t to shape anyone’s beliefs but to help them find their own faith- wherever that took them.