“I’ll walk with you.” It started with a sticker stating those powerful words. The sticker was given to Brent and Jen Holtry by their close friends and neighbors, Monty and Annie Skinner. Brent had been tasked with coming up with the theme for their stake youth trek adventure that summer of 2020, and he loved the concept of “I’ll walk with you.” But like most great things, what would eventually become a revolutionary trek and movement for their Fair Oaks, CA stake was not without its growing pains and delays. In hindsight, the Holtrys are grateful: they needed more time. As the year 2020 progressed, it quickly became clear that the trek was not going to happen anytime soon with the shifting guidelines of the global pandemic. This gave Brent more time to think and cull and create the needed trek plan. It also gave Brent and Jen more hallowed time at home to tend to their youngest child, Jackson, who as it turns out, would need his parents to walk alongside him that summer of 2020, when he came out.
Read MoreIt was fall of 2022 and Gracee Purcell had just arrived in Provo, UT to begin her first year at BYU. Not only was she excited about pressing play on life in a college town, but she was also feeling a bit safer after discovering the RaYnbow Collective—an LGBTQ+ coalition and resource provider wherein she could exhale and be herself. Their first initiative that fall was to fold and distribute 5,000 small booklets advertising LGBTQ+-friendly resources (therapists, safe housing, scholarship and event info, etc.) in the welcome bags that would be given to incoming students at New Student Orientation (NSO) with the hopes that the info would prove helpful to the (reportedly 13%) of BYU students who identify as LGBTQ+. But the day before NSO, the RaYnbow Collective received word that a unilateral decision was made against their contract with BYU and their booklets would be pulled and thrown away…
Read MoreAfter receiving his PhD in Tucson, Ben Schilaty’s path veered north, back to Utah, when he felt the timing was right to apply for the MSW program at BYU. And it was; he was accepted. While there in 2017-2018, Ben reached out to the BYU administration and said he wanted to be involved in LGBTQ causes. While initially guarded, they agreed to meet with Ben. Ultimately, BYU formed a working group of nine administrators and LGBTQ nine students who met once a week to talk about inclusion and the climate at BYU. This is where Ben met Charlie, and they became truly good friends. He also met Steve Samberg, the general counsel at BYU, who also became a good friend and set Ben apart as a High Priest…
Read MoreAt least once a week, there’s one particular professor at BYU who meets a student on campus for lunch. He’s exceptionally extroverted for an academic, and considers these lunches the highlight of his week. Over Cougar Eat confections, they discuss how to navigate life, love, and quite possibly, how to survive being gay at BYU. His is a story you may already know; his life is one most likely do not. But Ben Schilaty’s invited all to join him for a walk on his path in his memoir, A Walk in My Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint. Many wonder how does Ben do it? How does he live as an openly gay member of the LDS faith who not only observes the BYU Honor Code, but works within its office. But he does; and many who get to know him up close do walk away convinced he’s found a way to be content with a complex reality…
Read MoreGrowing up in Idaho, Gwen Priest spent more time at the racetrack with her family than at church. Her parents sometimes took her and sometimes didn’t. They sometimes drank, and sometimes didn’t. Because of this so-called “sinner” status, she felt a tension within her largely-LDS community. Some families wouldn’t let their kids play with Gwen and her siblings. But Gwen always loved the gospel teachings and the sense that when her family life wasn’t stable, the gospel was…
Read MoreNikki Smithson’s upbringing looked a little different from most of the LDS families who surrounded hers in the pews. In the 1970s, most couples at church were not interracial like her parents, but she has nothing but fond memories of the “great childhood” she experienced and of her “great parents” who are still married (and active in the church today). Nikki was very aware of the controversy mixed-race couples like her parents endured, but she says she has no recollection of learning about the LGBTQ community back then. It was something she was sheltered from, largely because her parents didn’t know too much about it themselves.
Read MoreDecades ago as Kaci neared high school graduation, her dad would often think back on her childhood and say, “Some people would say Kaci thinks outside the box, but I’m not even sure she knows there is one.” While being raised in an active LDS family with a father who was later called as a patriarch characterized her childhood, Kaci Cronin has always had an adventurous spirit open to new ideas. “The balance of that and being rooted in the gospel can be a great contradiction, but I try to minimize that. Even if you have strong traditions, you can accept the new.”
Read MoreWhen she was four years old, Lisa Ashton and her older brother Joe took a walk around the block with their father. A walk Lisa would never forget. As they circled their Rancho Cucamonga, CA neighborhood, Ken Taylor assured his kids it was in no way their fault, but he would soon be moving out of their home. He and their mother were getting a divorce…
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