An openly gay missionary. Most people have yet to meet one. Some may wonder if it’s even possible. But Elder Shane Carpenter’s smile shines brightly above his missionary tag and the rainbow heart pin he wears while serving full-time within the circumference of “the happiest place on earth,” in Anaheim, CA. Elder Carpenter is beloved among his fellow missionaries, and most importantly, by his mission president, who has seen closeted missionaries struggle. The president committed not to let that experience repeat and has thus made it a priority to make his mission a zone of safety and love for all. He even did a mission wide training with Elder Carpenter’s help on how to best minister to our LGBTQ+ community.
While Shane is loving his mission, getting him there wasn’t the rote just send in your papers and wait two weeks for your call process many experience. Shane had always had a very firm testimony of his Savior and desire to serve in this capacity, but due to his unique circumstances, his parents did not want him to sign up for a mission unless he was really ready, and his application included the words “Openly gay” at the top. It was full authenticity or bust. Knowing it could be a really tough situation, his mom Diane says, “Until he could own who he was, we didn’t support it. I didn’t want to send him on a mission hiding in a closet.”
Shane had come out publicly in 2019 via a middle-of-the-night Instagram post his parents woke up to. But this wasn’t a surprise for his parents. In fact, Diane had known since his preschool years. When he was about four, she counts it as a blessing that she felt the Spirit speak the words, “He is gay.” While she was comforted to have this tip off of a revelation so early in the game, it was still a lot to process “for the LDS mom in me,” she says. She was raised in an open-minded family who wholly loved her gay cousins. While talk of their gay family members had always been positive in her home, Diane says, “That doesn’t mean I fully understood at the time what that really meant in the big picture.”
Diane kept this knowledge about their son quiet for about four more years, and then told her husband, “I think Shane’s gay, honey.” Together, they kept it on the down low, especially as Shane himself wasn’t aware yet. But around the time he turned 10, he started to notice he was… different. From his friends. From his twin brother, Logan. From most of the kids in his classes. And by this time, his parents were prepared to help him find the words to vocalize it. Shane didn’t come out publicly, and he certainly struggled for many years harboring a quiet depression. Diane says she’s sure many of the kids at school could have guessed he was gay – “It’s something you might kind of pick up on when you meet Shane.” At the time, the family lived in Austin, TX, where Shane had lots of friends and he’d often go on group dates with friends from church. Diane says, “Every girl loved him.” He continued to be the bright, bubbly boy on the outside he always was (“To know Shane is to love him”), but at home he was dealing with major depression and suicidal ideation. For Diane and husband Scott, it was a really hard time. They felt they’d lost their boy.
They prioritized counseling, and Diane felt a glimmer of hope one day when she was driving Shane home from a session and he expressed a realization: “Mom, this is just part of me. It’s not all of me.” Diane says, “As it sank in that this was just one beautiful part of him, he was able to stop feeling like it had to control him.” That is when Diane said he began to make progress with his mental health. The Carpenters moved to West Jordan, UT right before Shane’s senior year, and she was pleasantly surprised that this ended up being great timing for him. As he moved into a new high school, he was able to just be himself and let go of the years of trying to hide or sort through complex feelings. He finally fully embraced he was gay, and Diane says she felt, “I had my son back.”
After high school, Shane went to BYU-I where he had a remarkably positive experience. He befriended some other gay students who were all supportive of each other. It was during this time Shane came out publicly on Instagram, then started to speak of going on a mission. With his parents’ encouragement, he took it slow. First, he went to the temple. A year later, he started his mission papers. He was 20 by the time he turned them in, enough time for him to be able to embrace his authentic self. He started the process with his BYU bishop, then continued when he came home. All were cautious. Diane and Scott didn’t want him going to a country where being gay was punishable by crime, thus the “openly gay” note on his papers. But it took a while for Shane to get his call. SLC church headquarters had called his stake president with a few more questions, and he was called back in for another interview. None of this bothered Shane, but Diane said the extra scrutiny was hard for her, who’d already sent two children on missions. “This is a gay kid choosing to go out for the Lord,” she says. She didn’t understand why it needed to be made harder with the stigma of extra questioning that could have been part of the initial process. Luckily, Shane had already been evaluated by LDS Services for his mental health, because if not, that would have added an extra delay.
But the added delays in all this did make it easier for Shane to enter the Anaheim mission field at the same time as his mission president, who has been exceptionally understanding and supportive from start to finish. Right when he arrived, the president told Shane, “I have your back. No one’s going to treat you in a negative way because you’re gay.” And he has kept his word. Diane says Shane’s setting apart blessing from his stake president was beautiful. It advised that he would affect even more people outside his mission than in it, something that has proven true as Shane has been able to share his unique experience on various forums with other LGBTQ missionaries, investigators, and friends throughout the world.
Elder Carpenter does not tell people that this path in the church is easy, but shares truths he learned at home from his mom. Diane says, “We didn’t vocalize to our kids the need to say, ‘We know the church is true.’ Rather we say, ‘We know the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. The church is a vehicle to teach that. Even prophets are fallible men, mistakes can happen. But Christ is perfect, and we can lean on that.’ This knowledge is vital for us and probably why my son is on a mission today.”
Shane is very aware that there are many paths to God and recognizes that there are various ways to return to Him. He was open with his stake president about the fact that he had dated men before his mission, and his family (and stake president) believe that the law of chastity is and should be the same for everyone. “It’s not the law of ‘you can’t hold hands, date, or kiss someone’,” says Diane. She recognizes that human connections and relationships are key to securing the happiness of all her children. The Carpenter kids include Whitney Graham – now 27, and married to Andrew Graham, and the mother of Kennedy; Jordyn Watson – 26 and married to Miles; twins Shane and Logan – 22; and Joshua – 14, and Abigail – 14 who completed the family through the gift of adoption. Diane says many of her kids have struggled with their mental health, so recently she got a semicolon tattoo as a symbol of the mental health awareness movement: “Wait, there’s more.” Diane filled the punctuation mark with the rainbow colors – one for each of her six children. (And to represent the LGBTQ community.)
Recently, the Carpenters’ second oldest, Jordyn, came out as nonbinary gender-fluid (pronouns they/them), and they have been wholly embraced by their family through the process. When Jordyn initially came out as bi at age 17, Diane says she didn’t handle it quite as well as she wishes she had, acknowledging at the time she was caught up in Shane’s mental health issues. But now she is grateful for the extreme grace and forgiveness Jordyn shows her. Diane is also so impressed by the love and support from Jordyn’s husband, Miles, saying, “I love, love, love him!”
Diane says her family loves the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Carpenters have since moved to Castlerock, CO, where they host a monthly FHE for ALL (LGBTQ, allies, and leaders) out of their home, hoping to “provide a safe place where everyone can be authentic and share their love of the Savior.”
