Marion and David McClellan were initiated into the camp of parents who just go with it with their firstborn. Their oldest child, Anna, stomped around in moonboots and Yu-Gi-Oh t-shirts playing Pokemon and that’s just how things were, so they let her be her. Marion says, “The minute I wasn’t dressing her in floofy pink dresses anymore, she was instantly in basketball shorts and graphic t’s.” The McClellans operated off the assumption, “We just thought kids are however they came out.” So nine years later when their young son Ford was wearing Wicked Witch of the West costumes and aqua glitter butterfly flip flops or ruby red slippers, Marion says, “We just went with it.” Little did they know that decades later, Anna would discover the word “nonbinary” best described her gender identity, which immediately made complete sense to her husband, parents, and everyone else who has known and loved her over her 32 years. Anna being Anna paved the way for Ford’s journey when he later came out as gay in 2018, at age 16.
It happened one night while sitting on the couch listening to his mom’s playful prodding about the importance of getting his Duty to God award plan in place. Ford—typically the “most compliant and sweet kid in the universe who showed up a half an hour early every week to prep the sacrament”—snippily turned to his mom and said, “Mom, I’m gay and I don’t want to be Mormon anymore!” Marion says “stunned” and “shocked” are not strong enough words to describe the feeling that coursed through her body. Her first coherent thought was, “We couldn’t have a gay kid! We have FHE every week!” Marion had believed everything she was taught about gay people—that it was a choice. But somehow, she was able to harness these emotions with a force “that must have been from God.” Gentle words informed her reply: “We love you. We’ll walk with you on whatever path you choose. Your dad loves you. Do you need anything else because I need to go whip the cream for this party we’re having in 5 minutes?” Ford later confirmed that he premeditated the timing of his delivery, knowing his mom couldn’t completely lose it with company coming over.
Ford ran downstairs “like a cockroach” to be by himself, and Marion went into the kitchen to whip the cream (while bawling hysterically) for the party of people now approaching in four minutes. Somehow, she kept it together and later that night, approached her son to check on him and ask if he wanted to tell his dad or if he wanted her to do it. Ford gave her permission to tell his dad.
That night, David walked into their room to find Marion staring at the wall like a zombie. She blurted out, “Ford is gay and doesn’t want to be Mormon anymore,” the latter part of this sentence holding the more troubling truth for her. David replied, “Are you serious?” The look she returned confirmed it. David’s facial reaction made Marion glad Ford wasn’t in the room with them. But that night, David went through the entire grieving process, while Marion took an Ambien and went to sleep. They both woke up with the same conclusion—that they had a lot of work to do to become the parents Ford needed them to be.
While David tends to be a “thoughtful, slow processor,” Marion says she’s never been considered an “underwhelming” figure and prefers the firehose approach to life. Thus, she jumped right in the deep end with resources, the next day consulting with a trusted friend who was already a Mama Dragon and mother of two queer kids. She came home with a link to the Mackintosh Family’s story on the LDS church’s website, and The Family Acceptance Project. David and Marion met with Richard Ostler in her first week of learning and soon after found Encircle. As she shared these resources with David, they both came to the same conclusion that their sweet Ford, “as close to perfect as you could get,” did not choose this and had not been “swept up in lascivious lies.”
Marion jokes that the church’s fatal flaw was teaching her that she could talk to God and God would talk back. An extremely devout member of the LDS faith who had served in “all the callings,” Marion says, “The same voice that gave me counselors names for presidencies and had been talking to me all my life said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with your son, he is exactly as I created him.” While this was somewhat of a relief, it put Marion—and her husband who had the same impression—in a really tricky spot with their belief system. She now says, “It’s interesting that most of the parents in the support groups we’ve been a part of heard the same thing about their kids.”
The McClellans still live in the cozy gingerbread house in which they raised their six kids in Payson, Utah. It was the home David’s grandparents had built and lived in, and Marion loved the Brady Bunch-esque idea of living in the same home forever, so after David’s grandmother died, they bought it. After the whiplash of an immediately onset faith crisis, this home became their enclave, as church—once their second home—quickly became tricky territory to navigate. Marion began to hear all the messages the way her child must have—as a10-year-old in Primary singing songs about eternal families, and realizing none of that was for him. As a young man being taught that homosexual behavior is a serious sin. “But at age 12, breathing and washing dishes are human behaviors.” Marion now reflects that a tween isn’t able to differentiate exactly what “behavior” indicates, leading to self-loathing and shame. She says, “Fortunately, he didn’t absorb much of that; he knew he didn’t choose this, so it couldn’t be a sin. And we are very lucky because a majority of parents in our community find out their child is queer AFTER a suicide attempt. Fortunately for us, he wasn’t in that category.”
But still, Ford was not yet ready for others outside his family to know he was gay, so his mom encouraged him to keep attending church to avoid suspicions. She now says, “I don’t regret many things in my life because if I could have done better, I would have. But I regret that I didn’t have him stop attending church immediately and stay home with him. I wish I knew how dangerous it was for him to continue attending, even with his resilience.” Marion says most of the parents in this space she’s befriended share that regret. As she continued to see the harm in policies—especially as she had to explain the 2015 exclusion policy to her perfect child, Marion’s world unraveled. Church became a minefield, as she fearfully anticipated what people might say each week. She started bringing a second set of keys and there were only two Sundays that whole year she didn’t leave early, crying. After going to church, it took Marion nearly an entire week to recover before the Saturday dread and Sunday trauma would return again. But at this difficult time, Marion still felt fortunate to work in the temple with David. That first year after Ford came out, they were in the temple weekly, and for Marion, often daily, as there, she could quiet her mind and seek clarity.
In the temple, she remembers being fascinated by Eve, and how she was “exactly correct.” Marion continues, “In the church I grew up in, there were only ‘Adams’ allowed. We were expected to be obedient with exactness, not to look at a commandment and choose something differently.” In the temple, she heard words come to her clear as day that said, “You were never meant to be an Adam. It’s time you start acting like the Eve you were always meant to be.”
But after a lifetime of daily scripture reading and memorizing handbooks, embracing a nuanced mindset was virtually impossible. It took half of her six kids deciding to stop attending church, some painful therapy sessions with David, and a silent meditation retreat for Marion to examine her personal integrity before she experienced the clarity she was seeking. She says she came to a realization that she would never associate with any organization that taught what her church taught about queer people; so was it the right place for her to remain? For Marion, the decision was no. She knew this decision would not be popular in their heavily LDS, Payson, UT community, but she had also watched how her straight kids had concurrently been so warmly embraced by the LGBTQ+ community they had begun to interact with at family events at Encircle and the Augenstein family’s frequent ally events. Marion knew they could still find community; it might just look a little different.
One day she asked one of her straight sons if he was ok “going to all the gay stuff with us.” He replied, “Yeah, the gays are a lot more fun than the straights.” While at Encircle, Marion also sadly observed how many LGBTQ+ people had lost their families after coming out and weren’t even allowed to be around their younger siblings anymore. She saw how quick they were to embrace her family. While her faith deconstruction had proven to be the most painful thing she’d ever experienced, Marion says, “When people say the lazy learner thing about people like us who have gone through this, I want to punch them in the face. There’s nothing lazy about what we’ve gone through.”
The McClellans have deeply felt the agony that comes when you step away from a faith community that’s not exactly trained to know what to do with you. After having been in the same neighborhood where they served their ward and stake families diligently for 30 years, Marion says there is a painful void.
All that being said, Marion feels, “Having a gay kid is the greatest blessing I never knew I wanted. I would never change any of it, even with the pain and strangeness. Our lives needed to change… But I would never change him. I love him and his partner.”
Ford, 23, now lives with his partner in Midvale and works as an engineer for a soil tech firm at Hill Air Force Base. Marion loves observing his happiness. She reflects how once upon a time, she put qualifiers on parental success based on whether her kids were “on the covenant path,” but now she’s grateful to observe them from a vantage point where she can just step back and appreciate how all six of her kids are “the most amazing humans. They are such good people – so compassionate, so thoughtful, they love our family. Before, I just had a limited ability to see.”
