Newlyweds since June, Jett & Jessie are what one might call “unruly gays,” and they have no regrets. It’s a term they’ve coined on their IG site: @headedtonineveh, and a concept that still makes them laugh. Their summer wedding at the White Shanty in Provo (coincidentally aka the setting for the infamous party scene in “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”) sealed the deal--in an (unruly) sense. No longer were they “Saint Gays—the kind who put other LDS at ease as faithful members with full membership willing to be single and celibate, forgoing any relationships.” Jett and Jessie claim that, “While saint gays are sometimes weaponized against unruly gays, they are not to be confused with the straight, single LDS folk who are encouraged to pursue marriage and pray to fall in love. Saint gays pray not to fall in love.”
For them, it's a sad reality that once resonated. But Jett and Jessie were deeply touched when their entire bishopric and much of their Eagle Mountain, UT ward came out to celebrate at their reception. They acknowledge “leadership roulette” is currently serving them well, and they’ve felt embraced by their current congregation. Jett taught Gospel Doctrine up until the week before the two married. Upon addressing the elephant in the room and likening her situation to the end of Mosiah in which the Lord addressed “the wayward members,” Jett became emotional as she announced she knew she’d be released as she was doing something contrary to church doctrine. After the class, she was moved by the line of people who came up to hug and thank her for her lessons.
Teaching the gospel is something that always came natural to Jett, a returned missionary who Jessie describes as “way more orthodox than me”—ironic, as Jett was married to another woman before Jessie, while Jessie followed a more prescribed path, having married a man at age 20 with whom she was married to for nearly 15 years and had three children with. Since their divorce, Jessie’s former husband maintains a friendly co-parenting relationship with both Jessie and Jett and is supportive of their relationship. Although, it was about seven years ago that Jessie first began to wonder if she might also be attracted to women.
It happened during a slice-of-life production for an A&E documentary Jessie was recruited to be in, though her segments never saw the light of day. However, on set at Jessie’s house, while nursing a newborn and wrangling a toddler, Jessie found herself fascinated by two of the female crew members who presented as more masculine and were “most definitely gay.” At the time the information didn’t startle Jessie nor her husband—merely she just observed the feelings, and watched as life marched on—as a wife, mother, and dance choreographer who taught at BYU off and on for six years. Explaining that perhaps it’s because she’s a millennial, Jessie recognizes many her age (36) didn’t inherit as much of the cultural shame others do, she says, “For me it wasn’t a big traumatic thing… my takeaway was ‘it’s fine. You’re fine.’ I see it as a gift, as part of my divine nature.”
At this, Jett laughs and says, “I find it interesting that it wasn’t hard for her, that it wasn’t traumatic.” Just entering her 50s, Gen X Jett hates having to explain how there’s nothing more annoying than errantly being called a boomer, but acknowledges she grew up in the generation where everyone was required to read The Miracle of Forgiveness and beat themselves up. “There was no gay representation anywhere. I now love watching old movies where you can see the gay-coded characters of the time; it’s a lot of fun.” Jett never felt like a “traditional girl.” She says, “I liked boy things and boy characters on Halloween, like the Lone Ranger. I wanted to be anything but the princess. I’d rather be the knight who fought and rescued her. I was clearly a queer little girl.”
When Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted, Jett found herself fascinated by the head of security character Tasha Yar, and told her mom she wanted a “short, boy hair cut like her.” Jessie jokes about Jett’s Xena warrior princess phase, which included her wearing hightops and a leather vest everywhere. Jett admits what started as a “this show is so ridiculous” evolved into Jett joining the internet explosion of the 90s and became a creator of a wildly popular Xena fan fiction comic strip. Her work took off to the extent she became known “by the Xena gays” and even the head writers of the show took notice of her strip. Her comic strip was successful enough to pay for her room and board at school. “I would kill for that now,” Jett laughs. She learned most of her fan mail came from “gay women assuming I’m gay, too. I’d laugh and say, ‘No I’m not,’ but I acknowledged Xena and her ‘friend’ likely were.”
This wasn’t the last time Jett garnered fans, as the current go-to cartoonist for Sunstone, and as a past contestant on America’s Got Talent as part of the performance group Aurora Light Painters. She also attended art school at Sheridan College in Canada, which is where, during her first year, she allowed herself the concrete thought and then to say aloud that she might be gay. “It was momentous to allow the thought enough cohesion that I spoke it into the world.” And then, “like a Mormon gay ladder, I went through the stages of gay Mormon grief and panic. 1- Don’t tell anyone, remain single and celibate. 2 – Only tell close friends and family and stay in the church and ‘Saint Gay’ our way through.”
At school, Jett was exposed to other gay women for the first time, though she laughs they were “crass and a bit shocking to me, a good Mormon girl from Farmington, UT. But I liked them.” There, she met a woman at, of all places—a Xena party, who she fell for. She taught her all the missionary discussions, still fresh in her mind. Jett’s dad baptized the woman, and ultimately Jett realized the woman would go on to marry a man, which she did. Jett then migrated her way through singles wards, and eventually met and married a woman she lived with in San Francisco for over ten years. While she’s never said the words “I’m gay” to her parents, Jett says they talked around it and she remembers her mom once hugging her and saying, “Oh Jeanettie, your life is so hard,” back when she was going to church as a “Saint Gay.” That made Jett realize that, “A lot of Mormons love to cast their gay loved ones as tragic figures. We love the tragedies, the Romeo and Juliet stories. But we don’t want to be tragedies; we all want to be in romcoms. I realized I had to rewrite the narrative I had going for myself in my head.”
Jett’s San Francisco ward was always welcoming, which she chalks up to both a kind bishop who announced his desire for LGBTQ+ to feel welcome from the pulpit as well as the apparent desperation for anyone to come as numbers were sparse. But when Jett did go, he invited her to take the sacrament and gave her callings. She never banged on the door for a temple recommend, but always felt loved and welcomed. When the 2015 exclusion policy was announced, Jessie says, “Being labeled an apostate hurt Jett profoundly. She had served a mission and meant it.” Jett stopped going for a while. After her marriage ended in 2020, Jett jests she decided to further complicate a pandemic year by moving back to Utah and decided to “come back into full church activity.” When she told this to a friend, he said, “What are they going to make of you?” Jett replied, “They’re going to love me!” She smiles, “And they have.”
Jett decided not to be closeted when she moved into the ward. When the Relief Society came over to help her unpack, she told them she’d just broken up with her partner. Jett says, “They saw me in pain, heartache, divorce. I bristle when people say ‘Oh, those Utah Mormons.’ They have struggles, too—I’ve been truly welcomed in.” Jett decided to give dating men a “good college try” and while she found one nice man with whom she shared much in common, when she realized it just wasn’t going to work out, she says she felt Heavenly Father figuratively flick her on the forehead and say, “Jeanette, my dear daughter, you know why.” She says, “It was the first time, in my mid to late 40s, that I really truly understood and felt comfortable enough in my own skin to accept and tolerate…and celebrate this aspect of myself, as part of my divine nature. The first time Jessie said that, I rolled my eyes, but then I thought—no, she’s right. It is.”
Having already lived in the boundaries at the time, Jessie agrees, “Jett was the belle of the ball when she moved in—the cool, gay lady in the ward.” This year, there have been humorous moments when people realized their relationship had evolved. A new friend said, “I knew you were friends, but I didn’t know you were kissy friends” when she got their wedding invite. Their officiant was a good friend from the ward, and Jessie’s former co-chorister in Primary. Jessie’s 11-year-old son walked her down the aisle, her four-year-old was the flower girl, and seven-year old the ring bearer. “The kids adore Jett; they think she’s the best thing since sliced bread. Having her be a part of their lives has been a tremendous blessing. They’re so lucky to have a Jett,” says Jessie. Jett agrees, “I’ve lived in a lot of cool places and had a lot of cool jobs (as an animator) but I didn’t think I’d ever have kids. It’s stretched me in ways I could never be while single. It can be challenging, hard, exasperating—I’ve learned if you love anything, don’t put it on display. But it’s so rewarding and fun. There’s nothing else I’d rather do the rest of my life than be with Jessie, helping her raise her kids. I’m finally living the whole measure of my creation.”
As they’re still welcomed in their ward, Jett and Jessie still attend, and say, “It’s gone as well as possible.” They admit that over several conversations they had to explain quite a few things to their bishopric, who were new to the LGBTQ-LDS intersection, yet willing to listen to the podcasts and read the things Jessie and Jett recommended. Jett and Jessie explained how it can be hard for someone at the top of the figurative food chain in the church (white, male, straight) to understand what they were going through. It also helped having Jessie’s brother (who served in a bishopric) send over a 5th Sunday lesson and beautiful talk he had written about LGBTQ+ inclusion. In the last meeting before they married, when a leader held out his tablet and asked Jett to read President Nelson’s “Think Celestial” talk, she explained she would not be reading from it, that she had listened live as it was delivered and reread it since and each time, it put her in tears. Jett said, “I understand why it speaks to many, it’s the refrigerator magnet talk. But in real time, I knew it would be used as a cudgel for people like me, and my parents and others will look at me and my wedding and think, ‘If you’re really thinking celestial, this is what you should be doing’—without taking into account my ability to honor personal revelation and have a life partner who loves and gets me.” Once she explained all this, the leader agreed, “Yeah, I guess you don’t need to read that…”. Jett’s parents had indeed made it “abundantly clear” they would not be at Jessie and Jett’s wedding, but hundreds of friends from their lives were, including Jett’s high school principal.
With the gentle prodding of Jessie, Jett has begun sharing their story at the Instagram site @headedtonineveh, which they find symbolic as Jonah also didn’t want to go to Nineveh—"the place where you have to go say hard things to an audience who won’t like it, and who may or may not be receptive.” But Jessie says, “You still have to say it and create more order in the world.” Jett agrees how the first time she was courageous enough to say she was gay to herself out loud changed the world for her. And now, she’s saying, “I grew up in the church, I did the things. Not only does Heavenly Father not care if I’m gay, but this is how I was made and now I’m married to the great, crashing love of my life—and raising kids.” Jessie concurs, “This is not counterfeit. We have as much right as anyone else to claim our divine doctrine and live it. This is my Eve moment. As matriarch of my family, I have special rights to divine revelation. This has absolutely been the right thing. I love my life. We’re not sorry.”
