Since their oldest son, Max, was a young toddler, Abby and Jeff McIntier always wondered if him being gay was a possibility. But they never wanted anyone to label him before Max himself was ready. Abby says, “In my heart, only he knows who he is. And God.” But, they admit several friends may have wondered.
While the McIntiers were in grad school in Buffalo, NY, their close network of friends all had young daughters Max’s age, and he loved playing princesses right along with them. After one particular playdate resulted in a fight (led by Max) over who would wear the Cinderella dress and who would be Rapunzel, Abby’s friend called her and joked, “You’d think this wouldn’t happen with the boy who’s over.” But even at home, Max gravitated toward stereotypically girl things. Abby says, “It wasn’t what I thought raising a boy would be like. My husband and I always thought, ‘Huh’.”
Fast forward to 2015, when Max entered middle school. Abby was about to pop with their fourth child when a friend called and said that one of their kids’ friends had called Max gay, and Max didn’t really seem to know what that meant. Abby thought, “Here it is. I sensed this might come. And I knew I needed to create an environment for him to know he was safe being whoever he is—and only he will know who that is. It’s not ok for anyone else to tell him.” At that time, the political climate was quite negative regarding LGBTQ issues in the McIntier’s Richmond, Kentucky hometown, and middle school can be quite harsh in general, so Abby would often find herself engaging in late night conversations with Max about “so and so in their youth group who’s gay and their parents won’t accept them.” Occasionally, Abby would ask, “Are you?” Max would always reply, “No, I’m not.” Abby would quickly follow that with, “Well you know it's ok, right?”
Finally, in the summer of 2020, Max was ready to come out. He told his dad first, after Jeff said, “You know, if there’s something you want to tell us...” Later with his mom, while sitting on the couch, Max blurted out, “You know I’m gay, right?” Abby nonchalantly replied, “I didn’t, but that’s cool.” Their late night, supportive talks continued into that fall, and one evening, Max was talking about how excited he was to be out, to date someone, to post it on social. Abby felt something inside her want to verbally gush about the prescriptive life her son could have – still in the church, still going on a mission, “the best uncle ever, and he wouldn’t even have to marry a woman!” He could be like a famous performer Abby had known in her younger days as a performer who was now openly gay and still actively LDS (and presumably celibate). Of that night, Abby says, “Max had just turned 16, and luckily, the spirit shoved a sock in my mouth, and I stopped presupposing and just listened. And I realized there’s got to be more to his life than that. I couldn’t tell him to go on a mission so he could go to the temple so he could go to the celestial kingdom and check all those boxes. Call it spirit, intuition, whatever, but nope, something stopped me, saying, ‘That’s not what you’re going to say’.”
The following Valentine’s Day, in 2021, Max decided to come out publicly on social media to mark the one year anniversary of the first time he’d come out to anyone (a close friend). Abby says that everyone saw his post, including a bishop of another ward who’d called Max’s seminary teacher to warn him. The timing couldn’t have been worse. On the very next day, the lesson in seminary was on Sodom & Gomorrah, and it took an anti-LGBTQ direction as “homosexuality” was written on the board as one of the reasons why the lands were destroyed. People in the class compared it to active sins and things like addiction—but being gay was something Max didn’t choose. Friends called Abby who, now pregnant with her sixth baby, was on the treadmill fielding calls telling her that Max had left seminary quite mad. “He felt just awful—so embarrassed.” Abby read the lesson, and then did a deep dive into the Family Proclamation.
She says, “I had my own personal revelations that the proclamation feels incomplete to me. There’s nothing in there that says you cannot get married to a man and still live with God. There’s more knowledge to be received on this subject. I think that Heavenly Father is not withholding info, thinking, ‘Oh, you’re not ready to be non-racist or non-exclusive.’ I believe our biases, cultures, and dogmas stop us from receiving further revelation. We think we get an answer and move on, but there’s probably a lot more that Heavenly Father is trying to tell us.”
Abby emailed the two seminary teachers and the bishop of the other ward who happened to be at that lesson and told them, “Whatever was taught at best was naïve, misinformed, ignorant; at best, it was false doctrine.” Up until that point, both Abby and Max had grown very comfortable with who he was. That seminary lesson was the first time Abby realized her son might be ostracized and considered a sinner for something he didn’t choose. She thought, “There’s nothing wrong with him, and I didn’t like that someone would say that. I turned to Lift and Love and found resources to prove my point that I was right, and that everyone else was wrong… Now, I’m on a journey. I have conversations and sometimes get my feelings hurt. This can be just such a taboo topic.”
Jeff says, “I haven’t always had the best relationship with Max, but thankfully it’s never been because of his sexuality. One time, before he ever came out, I was really pleading to God about what to do about him and our relationship, and I remember distinctly feeling, thinking, and hearing, ‘He’s not yours, he’s mine. You’re just a steward over him for a short time. Your job is to love him.’ I never would have thought that on my own. I think I’m too prideful. But that’s how I know it was from God. All this is not my journey or my story. It’s his."
Shortly after Jeff and Abby had their last baby (their six kids now include Max—18, Perry—15, Nora—11, Freddie—1, Oscar—3, and Charlie Quinn—18 mos.), the McIntiers, who own a couple preschools as well as a dance performance company, were a little surprised when they got a visit from their friend, who now serves as their stake president, and his wife. He was a counselor at the time, and he was feeling out whether she might up for serving as the stake Young Women’s president—with a four-week-old baby. His wife said, “No, don’t do that to her.” Abby says there were probably others in their stake who also might find that appointment jarring. (Abby says, “I’m loads of fun, but rough around the edges. The kind of person who’d wear the t-shirt that says, ‘I’m not drunk, this is just my personality’.”) But Abby accepted the call and continued serving with the youth she’d grown to love as ward YW president. She felt she’d found her niche in encouraging Max and others to invite their friends to church activities—including those who might feel on the margins. Something Max can relate to.
Max has found his crowd in the theatre, and he still keeps in touch with a great group of friends he met in a six-week theatre program last summer. There he met a handful of somewhat closeted kids who live in fear of their families’ responses. Abby says, “I don’t think I’m good at anything, but in hearing about that, I realize I handled this well.” Max is excited to head to the BFA theatre program at Coastal Carolina University this fall. While he usually opts to work at the job “he loves” on Sundays (Dunkin Donuts), Abby says Max will occasionally still come to church with his family because he knows she likes having him there.
Recently, Max attended a sacrament meeting in which someone gave a talk about the law of chastity and temple work. Abby says, “Nothing about LGBTQ was mentioned, just that families can be together through Heavenly Father’s plan.” Yet Abby, as well as their stake president friend who was in attendance, heard and felt what Max and people like him must be hearing and feeling during talks like that. Abby watched Max keep his arms crossed tightly across his chest, triggered. Later their friend acknowledged that while there are so many great things about the church, the way Max must hear things like that is, ‘I will never be enough because of how I was born’.”
Abby jokingly calls herself an agnostic Mormon even though she very much believes in Heavenly parents that we are created in their image specifically. She just realizes there are so many things we don’t know and God may not be exactly how she understood as a child and young adult. “For us to think we know all the things right now and to claim this won’t change, it seems naïve. The eternities are vast – I think this is just a blip.” Abby says people ask her how she does it, how she stays in. When she was 15, her brother passed away and she says that likely out of fear, she decided then to assume the church was true so she could see her brother again. But that experience, along with other family challenges, make it impossible for her to “go back to putting her head in the sand because now, I have such a bigger heart. I think about things differently than the way I was raised. I see all people now more as my peers.” Her family often teases her about her plethora of “gay things” which includes rainbow pins, ribbons, books, etc. she collects to give to others. She says, “I wear the rainbow pin not as a protest, but as a symbol of inclusivity and safety to anyone of the LGBTQ+ community, whether they are out or not. I believe when I bear my testimony, particularly in my calling when working with the youth or leaders, my testimony rings differently, albeit the same, when there is evidence I’m an ally. I want all the youth to know they’re loved, they’re wonderful, and that they matter, are needed, and have a divine purpose.”
In her calling, Abby says she tries to share her personal experiences when she gets asked about things, especially when people present being inclusive as an antidote to “teaching the truth.” She says, “There’s always that clause. So while I’ve thought we might disagree on what the truth is, and my personal revelations might be different than yours, we can all agree we are called to love and not judge. And that the plan is a personal journey between us and God; that’s it. We tend to ostracize and get uncomfortable with people in church who don’t fit the mold. We feel like we have to save them, or they’re evil or done or have crossed that line, and can’t come back. But that takes away our agency and thus makes the Atonement null. Throughout history and scriptures, that’s not the case; Christ died for us all so that all of us can come back.”
