SECRETS of a Mormon Insider & Historian - D. Michael Quinn's "Chosen Path" w/ Moshe Quinn | Ep. 1866

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of warmer Stories podcast I'm your host John delin it is February 2nd 2024 and today we are here to plug a book that I can give a full-throated full-hearted uh John delin Mormon stories podcast endorsement the book is called chosen path of memoir uh it's got the name d Michael Quinn on it but Barbara Brown Barbara Jones Brown I think you had something to do with it as well right sure I published it my company published it signature books and I edited it and was the lead lead annotator of it yeah your name should be on the cover then no no no no no all the all the credit goes to Michael okay all right well I'm going to be honest can I be honest I'm going to be a little vulnerable like I've been doing this stuff for so long 30 years whatever I've read so many books and sometimes as you get tired of Mormonism and Mormon history believe it or not and this is a sensitive topic for me cuz like D Michael Quinn one of the church's top historians I've been excommunicated from the Mormon church like D Michael Quinn was I was at BYU when he was excommunicated and I was swimming in that whole deal and uh it's just really um it's a sensitive and triggering topic for me to be talking about so I was trying to get out of it I was trying to talk to Barber about I don't want to do this and she's like I'm going to make you do it I did not I know she never said that but those are my words that h you decided to do it yeah but but then I started reading it and every single page I've read there's been just like mind-blowing eye popping information so I recommend this book for everyone right now pause this episode go to Amazon or signature books or drive to your local Benchmark books buy chosen path you will not regret it uh that's my endorsement Barbara Jones Brown welcome to Mormon stories podcast welcome back to Mormon stories podcast podcast thanks for having me on John yeah I am thrilled to have as my co-host for the Mormon stories book club the Rebecca biblioteca hey Rebecca hey John how are you today welcome back thank you so much always happy to be here to talk about books right absolutely and uh host of Mormon podcast I should say thank you yes yeah and we're so delighted and this is the first time I'm meeting him to have with us in studio is it mosha Quinn is that your last name mosha mosha Quinn yeah yeah and mosha tell us who you are uh yeah so I I'm uh Michael's uh youngest child youngest of four um and uh I was uh involved in you know helping to to see this manuscript that we um you know looked at and discovered in a way after his passing and try to find um a home for it trying to find a a platform for um people to be able to read his story and uh you know see what his life was about and what he you know thought of it beautiful we're so grateful to have you it's so nice to meet you tell us just a couple sentences about kind of who you are what you do yeah so uh I am I'm a an art teacher um have a a masters in photography and I've been teaching art for um a while now almost uh two decades I live in the Bay Area um I grew up in Salt Lake City primarily but also grew up um half of my adolescence was in Missoula Montana with my mom and my brother um but yeah grew up primarily in Sal Lake City and left after high school and um uh moved around a little bit but I've been in the Bay Area for about um 18 19 years now but it's always good to come back to visit I still have family in the Salt Lake area so I do come here once or twice a year and what year were you born 1976 so that's right smack dab Leonard Arrington kind of middle of that stuff which means you wouldn't probably remember a lot of that say I wasn't uh keeping tabs on all that at the time as a toddler yeah well uh so nice to have you I can't wait to have you be a part of this discussion so thanks thanks for being here thank you Barbara for those who just either have never been Mormon or aren't really plugged in can you summarize who D Michael quinnn was really quick just so people know why we're even here talking about this guy sure so Michael Quinn will go down in history is one of the leading historians of Mormonism he started to develop his interest in Mormon history when he was a Youngster growing up in Glendale California and he started uh investigating unexplored parts of Mormon history that other historians hadn't necessarily gone into so looking at uh Joseph Smith's early polygamy looking at um whether or not women held priesthood Authority um looking at post Manifesto polygamy after 1890 when the church publicly stopped its practice of polygamy but then privately was continuing it in other ways he wrote about that so he goes into a lot of topics that were Taboo in Mormon history and kind of set the stage for where we are today talking more about these taboo subjects tell us where he was educated because I think that plays into so he received his undergraduate degree in English at BYU and then a master's degree in history at the University of Utah and then finally a PhD at Yale University so highly educated from the best in history Yale is not a a crummy School not at all as as Elder Holland said it's a pretty good school it's a pretty good school and and Elder Holland and Elder Holland who's an apostle of for the Church of Jesus Christ the lar Saints and D Michael Quinn were contemporaries they served in the same mission in England under the same Mission president Mary and de Hanks and then also um they were both contemporaries getting phds in in I I think CER Holland was in history or something similar to that maybe it was education but anyways they were contemporaries I love it so uh okay so I was supposed to mention this at the beginning uh thank you for joining us for the Mormon book club we do this every once in a while and uh I'm going to let Rebecca tell us what the next book is really quick and then we'll come right back to this discussion perfect It's always important to talk about the next book right so we are going to be reading uncultured and I've been posting about this on our Mormon stories book club Facebook page you can get more information about that um it's by Daniela meanc young she was raised in Brazil and part of the children of God cult it's a really interesting story we don't have a date yet but I'm guessing probably about a month from now I've been in contact with Daniela she's extremely excited to come on and tell her story it is absolutely fascinating so run out grab a copy get it on Audible start listening and we'll be covering this next week or next month beautiful thanks Rebecca and check out morm Minish podcast while you're at it okay so um yeah so D Michael Quinn is such an important character I'm going to say that the way I got to know about him was through reading a couple of his books origins of power and extensions of power which really talk about his observations around how power was wielded in the Mormon church for a couple centuries super important stuff and then the book early Mormonism in the magic worldview is that what it's called that's right he was one of the first to really do groundbreaking research I mean we all know about Stone in the Hat now but he was the one going into the Talisman and and all of the intricate folk magic stuff that informed Joseph and the Smith family worldview it's a super important book that's right and it won the Mormon history association's best book award in 1988 nice yeah yeah I was like a freshman at BYU anyway um such important uh place in history um so Barbara maybe let's begin just talking about the Memoir itself uh and I should say I've interviewed Michael on Mormon stories a couple times early on I did like a multi hour interview about his life story and then later I had him come back to talk about church finances so and I and I knew him a little bit personally too so what what would either you or Rebecca or mosha want to share about his early years that was kind of really popped out as interesting to you from from uh chosen path maybe that people should know or would be surprised to know so as early years meaning his Coming of Age years and um mosha do you want to talk about that because we have been talking and that was something that was actually surprising for mosha even as his son learning about his his Awakening sexuality and discovering that identity well I mean yeah I mean there are several things that that do come to mind but the the most powerful story for me well there's there's two one has to do with his sexuality uh and then the other one has to do with his um his ethnic identity and his uh his father you know concealing his uh Mexican-American well his Mexican heritage uh but yeah about the sexuality um like for me like there's a lot that I could say but there was this kind of like origin point for me in terms of like reading uh an account of my father's about his his own life it was a of his autobiography um that he shared with me and and us and the family after our parents divorce um couple years after the divorce he mailed us this 40 something page autobiography and um I was 12 at the time um and I read I read the whole thing spent an afternoon digging through it and um was really struck by a couple of things and and the one thing that I'll share with you right now is this story that he relates in the autobiography about when he was 12 12 years old and as I recall as he uh um described it in that version of autobiography he had maybe some reputation among some people for um having fooled around with some boys or um you know done some things along those lines um and he realized that at this time when he was 12 he really needed to make a choice um either he could um continue um exploring um his sexuality um his interest in uh in males and and in boys um or he could be a Mormon now he came from a a mixed Faith uh family his mother was Mormon um his grandmother was Mormon and the Mormonism really comes from that line his father he described always as like a lapsed Catholic so not really religious um but he had a lot of influence from um you know from his mother and especially his grandmother in Mormonism and it was really important to him um and at the age of 12 he realized that things had come to a kind of a head and that he had to make a choice um between between the two um and uh he resolved to uh to pursue the uh the path of a of a good Mormon um serving uh his faith and and serving the church um and this is something that I I I read like within two years of his coming out to me he came out to myself and my brother that's actually not right it's about about a year or maybe within a year of his coming out to me and my brother um I was I was just about 11 um when he came out to me and my brother was 13 and that that was a really powerful moment for me because of just the um intense vulnerability um I'd never seen in my father before um he was like there was there was just all this body language of extreme nervousness and he wasn't looking any of us in the eye um and he was kind of stammering and he didn't really know how to find his words and I was just um transfixed and shocked seeing just that and then finally when it got to the point of like saying you know I'm gay um and that's why and there's more I could say about like why this was coming at that time but but when he did when he did share with us that fact seeing it under this condition of extreme vulnerability where in a sense he seems scared and it seemed like he was a little afraid of our response you know it was this position of being 11 years old and my father is afraid of what I might say or or what I might do or how I might react so a year after that I'm reading this biography um about how how he describes this Choice when he's 12 years old between being gay and being Mormon and so I had this like this all this in the background of of witnessing his extreme vulnerability and how scared he was and and how much I felt for him um I mean deeply in a sense it maybe strengthened a kind of a bond or connection uh certainly you know understanding him better and feeling a great deal of empathy for him and it just seemed absurd when I was reading this biography um uh autobiography about this choice that he made because it just didn't seem to make any sense to me like why would you have to choose between the two I mean of course I I understood it but at the same time it it you know I didn't accept it it seemed it seemed absurd it seemed um it seemed like it it it didn't need to be that way and there was a sense of indignation that I felt um at his um having to make that choice or feeling like he had to make that choice um so yeah this is something that he he covers you know in this Memoir as well um but I really just like go back to when I was 12 years old you know reading um an earlier version of his autobiography that that um was a really big part of of my life growing up and understanding my father um in a certain way yeah and then um from a historical standpoint being a historian of Mormonism what stood out to me about Mike's early years was it was when he was a teenager and he from the Ward church building the library there he finds a book by Samuel W Taylor that talks about Samuel W Taylor's family life living post Manifesto polygamy and that was the first time Mike had ever heard about post Manifesto polygamy he was surprised to hear that Mormons actually some Mormons did continue to practice polygamy after the 18 90 Manifesto that officially uh supposedly ended the practice of polygamy in the LDS church and he stunned to learn that and that was his first kind of experience with Mormon history was learning about something that very few of us know about uh until he started talking more about it and Publishing about it so it was interesting to me to hear uh that that was his first early experience with Mormon history was when he was a teenager in his church building church library yeah powerful um do you want to add anything to that Rebecca um no I was just going to say that as we've been reading this in the Mormon stories book club people have just been overwhelmed from page one at just the vulnerability um and his true voice you know I mean I'm not sure everyone understood initially that these are his words you know they thought oh maybe this is some kind of biography but no this is Michael Quinn you can you can sense it through the pages and just the stories that are uncomfortable to hear uncomfortable to read perhaps but just completely uh vulnerable and so of course our readers are very interested in and I think probably you'll get to this question John but just the whole process through which why are we holding this book in our hand right now you know it was a manuscript you read as a 12-year-old how did it even come to be which I think is an incredible story well and there's a lot to say about that it's actually kind of complicated story um I mean a scretch for me that I feel like is relevant in thinking about that is like how he started started writing about his life uh from an early age you know being very interested in history being very interested in stories like um Barbara was touching on um he he wrote you know Diaries and and journals with a certain kind of seriousness um accounting for his life um and he began this really with some serious uh Focus late teens early 20s um he was pretty committed to to um uh creating journals um accounting for his life and also yeah I don't know I think yeah just accounting for his life the way that I think um that resonates with me which is a matter of like him I think processing his own meaning or like processing like what is Meaningful to him in life and also processing his own identity um so it's a through line for his whole career you know while he while he's researching um and pursuing his career as a historian um of Mormonism um he's he's also kind of like creating his own documents you know he's he's creating his own living documents of his life maybe even with some sense of himself as a historical figure someone whose life uh in inner yearnings inner struggles is worth looking at um this version that we um have right here is is the result of um decades really of of of that project of his that personal project of his um I myself was not so aware of um of a of a highly developed um voluminous uh to like we have like right now um because I all I really had in my own radar at that time was this 40 page thing from the 80s um but he he did send me a CD ROM in 2010 which I saw I didn't like really know what it was and I was busy and I put it in a drawer and I just never like really looked at it and I don't really recall him asking me he he asked if I had received a thing from him in the mail but he didn't follow up you know after I said oh yeah I got it and I have and I haven't had a chance to look at it yet and and then he never asked me about it again but he did share it with my older sister Mary and and then Lisa and um they they looked did it at that time and Mary actually had a few conversations with him about it with some thoughts and um and whatnot um um but it kind of like um I mean after 2010 it wasn't like really something that certain like I was aware of myself at all but even with my sisters you know life goes on and he didn't ask them any questions after like maybe a year or so and it sort of just kind of like petered out and when he passed away and there was like some initial um there were some initial questions about like his memoirs I myself had no idea what they were really referring to um and those questions didn't go directly to Mary but I asked her about it and like there was like this thing that she had been aware of like yeah was going to be on his laptop um she had the CD ROM somewhere I'm sure but this was 11 years later so she's like it must be on his laptop his laptop was you know in this um condo where he lived by himself in Southern California and so there was just going to be a matter of like you know just going through things and having the time to go there and and uh there were other priorities of ours um you know immediately after he died so it was a few months um going on several months before we were able to get the laptop and then translate these uh old Word Perfect files uh that were on his laptop to some like legible format where we could actually figure out which files were which like which files were research files which files were notes files and which files actually had to do with his Memoirs and that took some time as well just to get through the technical process of um translating these files in the right way to read so when we were able to get them um we we had this question for ourselves like well so what do we do with this I mean we know that our father wrote it for a reason um he didn't write it just for himself I he was a writer he was a writer who wanted to communicate um stories that really mattered and so we knew that he wanted this to be read um and it was a matter of uh time really before we had a conversation in contact with signature books um to discuss um this and we went to Signature of course because there's a long-standing uh connection and relationship between her father and signature books signature books honestly has been like a household name that I've been very aware of since well since early Mormonism the magic world view so since the the late 80s and um yeah it just seemed like a a logical and a natural fit and we were we were excited to see that signature books was interested in um carrying this Manus manuscript forward into um um you know a larger View for the the greater public yeah and I was so excited I started as director of signature books on March 1st 22 and the first manuscript to land on my desk was D Michael Quinn's Memoir and I said what Michael Quinn he had passed away the year before but I said Michael Quinn left a memoir you know nobody had heard about it in the the Mormon history community in general and so I was so excited I brought home the hard copy and just couldn't put it down I was reading at home and at work um and then I did some research into signatures files and I found that reviewers in 1998 when your dad originally submitted the manuscript the reviewers read it but it was just more of a skeleton manuscript and they said he needs to fill in more thoughts and share more of his feelings and and be more vulnerable and kind of open up and so do that and resubmit it but then I don't have any records of him ever resubmitting it to Signature books so we're thrilled that we did get it when we did and I'm I'm honored that this was the first um manuscript that I started working on a signature and briefly I want to I want to add to something you were saying earli Rebecca about the voice and you're just I'm saying it right now um Barbara um something for me that that feels um wonderful and very meaningful as being a to actually get a sense of his voice in ways that um I I didn't quite have access to like knowing him he was an an emotionally reticent father I would say he was always very close to us very present uh he's the best listener that I ever had in my life as far as being a supportive active listener but what I encounter in his Memoir is is a quality of of um Candor um and a quality of his own voice and also like some some subtle ways which are really interesting like his sense of humor coming out and the way the irony can play out um the way that he can like really succinctly imply something imply like inner struggle or or imply um you know imply a lot of like the the underlying um emotional content or or interpersonal content of a of a moment or an episode it's really fascinating to me to see that cuz it's a it's a facet of his voice and his personality um that I I didn't have access to because he you know he was a great listener but he was not necessarily a great divulger um in my relationship with him and so I really deeply value and cherish um that that vulnerability and that voice as I'm able to see it here all right well um does uh does what about the book or about what you've learned mosha discuss is his um courtship with Jan and his marrying Jan and to what extent they discussed his sexual orientation um before during uh their courtship any any anything you'll have to say about that well as far as the courtship goes um there was no discussion of his sexuality I know at that time I mean he was in the closet no one knew I mean no one at that time uh not even like a close confident knew that that he was gay um so he met my mother in this context of being completely in the closet um absolutely and it wasn't until a few or several years into the marriage that um there just came a point where he just realized that it was um it was untenable and unbearable for for my mother to continue living in this relationship where she was feeling um undesired and and unwanted um and feeling like she was at fault or she was to blame and he realized there was just so much pain and suffering that she was experiencing that that he had to um come out to her um and it was after uh their second child was was born um as I recall um that that happened and and um they had two more kids and uh then you know eventually he comes out like sort of like in stages to various people um in his life over time but yeah they they met under this condition of of complete concealment of um that part of his identity and and Mike um we should point out they were they were married in the early 60s when the church was teaching and there was there was a belief a general belief that oh homosexuality is just a a weakness of the Flesh and it's something that can be overcome you can pray the gay away and so Mike I don't think he was like trying to hide anything from Jan as much as he just really re really believed that if he married a woman married Jan in the temple who he was attracted to he said um and had children that that this issue would go away that he would no longer have these feelings of yearnings towards men so I think he really believed that and it was only after they become married and Mike says his yearnings for men only got stronger after he was in a mixed orientation marriage well and I think it's a really great point that you um emphasized Barbara about like he was attracted to her I mean one of the things that he says in the Memoirs he' been dating around that time he was a student at by you at the time he'd been dating women um at that time several as he puts it you know in that in that recent year or so and she was their first uh person that he'd met who was a woman that he actually felt genuinely sexual uh feelings of Attraction for and he thought that that was obviously a big deal like it was very encouraging and and um important for him and it obviously led him forward in a in a kind of a authentic way a true way for himself I remember very distinctly when I inter interviewed him the first time him explaining though how problematic his attraction for your mom was because he said that the more he experienced attraction for a woman the greater that ex that increased his experience of Attraction for men and so it wasn't like I don't know if he ever identified as bisexual or just as gay but what he said is whatever attraction he felt for Jan or a woman would only make it harder for him not easier for him to be suppressing his own sexual orientation he said he shared that with you and and what he writes in the Memoir is just that his attraction for men after Mar and Jan only becomes stronger and he he's dismayed because he thought it would decrease yeah so if it's okay because I want people to buy this amazing book uh I I'd like to read a little bit please so let's let's open our books uh to page 369 uh the date is 23rd of July 1978 and the ti TI of this section and this book is just it's got dates and it's kind of chronological and it's got really cool sections and entries and this one's called painful Cycles in gay straight marriage and who should be Michael's voice should that be mosha all right M yeah um read that first paragraph which kind of broke my heart and uh and if it's okay would you read that and then I'll I'll just that short paragraph there on that page actually read that whole section yeah okay yeah please if you don't mind if you're comfortable oh yeah and I'm comfortable yeah uh so 23rd of July 1978 painful cycles and gay straight marriage from my journal quote Jan spoke to me of the emptiness she feels with me and the extent of her loneliness for the kind of companionship that I am unable or unwilling to give her I told her she should not blame herself for the feelings she expressed to me tonight because they were natural and resulted from my own failures I brought up the solution of divorce that she has suggested to me seven or eight times in the past in which I vowed I would not oppose if she brought it up again even though I dread it as much or more than she does I urged it as the only apparent way she will be happy and I affirmed that I felt she could be happy that way she wants me to make the final decision and I said that because the difficulties the and I said that because the difficulties will in large measure be with her than with me that I could not make that decision for her I am at the point however where I dread anything more than casual conversation because we seem always to come around directly or indirectly to my failures and the results of my failures and I have difficulty enduring this constant reminder of my inadequacies and failures with the resultant guilt that oppresses me divorce seems like the ultimate failure of all our dreams but tonight it seemed like the best and only way for a resolution of our conflicts our conversation like so many before was expressed in calmness in anguish and in quiet tears and was concluded in the desperate clinging and urgency of Love Making so that's the end quote of the journal entry and then this is without quoting his own journal this was the cycle of painful discussions we had since 19 71 my very detailed Journal of 1978 to 1980 described others sometimes specifying my celibate homosexuality as the cause suffice it to say that these Cycles were repeated during the next seven years of our marriage so like on the one hand I'm just like gutted reading this um but then mosha I'm thinking of you and I'm thinking what's it like for you as one of their children to be reading this is there and I don't and then and never I want you to feel like there's a sense of like exploitation for getting you to talk about hard stuff so just only share what you are comfortable sharing and want to share but I'm curious how it feels for you to the extent that you want to share reading that about your parents well there's a lot there um of course that that uh comes up um I mean there's not a big surprise on the one hand of course just because of my lived experience and experiences with them um I mean really In This Moment like what comes up for me is is what I shared a moment ago about feeling gratitude about having access um to his real thoughts his real feelings um you know you know seeing him as as more of a of a full complicated human being which is not the picture available to me you know as his son especially as a boy uh growing up um but even as an adult you know just like so much of of one's parents life that that um you don't have access to so there is an element of um gratitude like I said to to be able to to see him and understand him more fully and more completely as well as my mother you know seeing her and understanding her uh more fully and completely um when I was a boy I have a general memory of um of uh of uh support and love and and care and consideration in our household um a lot of memories along those lines and then of course I have memories of of strife and arguments um and uh things that were not working out um so like reading this isn't like triggering and not that there's any suggestion that it would be for me but maybe some people might imagine it could be for me and it's certainly not um um so while there all are all these layers like I I had mentioned a moment ago I I am feeling like I said uh a lot of of gratitude and appreciation for being able to um see the bigger picture especially with you know an emotionally reticent father who is not um great at divulging and sharing personal things about his life um this feels um incredibly valuable to me um Barbara or Rebecca anything about that passage that really sticks out to you um not to put you on the spot sure probably we both have thoughts on this yeah I was going to say that um again since I'm in communication with the readers people that are reading in the book club and and those kinds of passages were just so vulnerable and so overwhelming we almost felt like we were looking in on something that we shouldn't be looking in on you know but yet incredibly moved and touched by everything that he said that's what I mean I I can't express to everybody just how intimate this book is it's just incredible I mean people not everyone knew D Michael Quinn certainly not to this level but you just get such a sense of everything so yeah there's that sense that should I even be reading this but I'm so glad that I am and I'm learning so much from it so that's an amazing gift that your father was able to give to everybody to readers for this book so I agree I think for me my takeaway after reading through the entire book um and just seeing how hopeful Mike was that he could live this you know desirable Mormon life of being living as a straight uh Latter-Day Saint man and trying so hard to make that happen um and then seeing these passages that clearly both he and Jan were in so much pain in spite of their love for their children and love for each other they were trying so hard to make it work but ultimately you just see the pain it caused them and I don't think it anyone should ever be encouraged to enter into a a marriage like that and again I I there are people I know and love who are either in or have been in mixed orientation marriages and I love those folks and I don't want to disparage their marriages in any way of course but just reading about how difficult it was it that just shouldn't be people should be allowed to be who they are and follow their true um yearnings and their true identities my takeaway and this passage um I mean gets me thinking about when they did get divorced um and my lived experience through that and and um there was this what year was that well 866 '85 886 mean they separated in ' 86 I sorry ' 85 and I think the divorce was finalized 86 so so 85 was like when he he moved out of the house um and shortly thereafter I really had this feeling and I'm sure there were other complications and layers to it but I really had this general feeling of um of a lifting of weight and a clearing of air and it seemed despite you know all these other complications and life being rich and everything but it just seemed like in general there was this um Improvement um and uh a lifting of the weight of stress and anguish and I was eight at the time so a lot of these things I you know I just I don't I was not really really aware of but but there was a feeling of this being better and and and our family situation being better so like as far as this solution of divorce goes this was in 1978 that that happens and then uh 7 years later you know I'm 8 years old they finally do get divorced well I I felt something of the relief of a solution at that time I was just if I can share I was just struck by how much he blames himself he frames it in terms of failure um you know and he's just beating himself up over Jan's loneliness and his failures and I'm just thinking ah like he wasn't a failure like his context failed him you know and it wasn't uniquely Mormon in that context but I just had the I just had the thought like it's like the Mormon culture battles that raged between the early 99s and it's been going on forever ER in the 70s but I think you know the the cultural Wars that I've been involved in from like let's just say 2005 until present it's like Michael lived them in his private life in the 70s and 80s yes as a foreshadowing of the cultural battles that we were all going to experience over the past 15 to 20 years but he was just dealing with it all internally whether it's same sex sexuality lgbtqq suicides mixed orientation marriages um feminism feminism historical cander you know in the church right does that resonate with you Barbara absolutely yeah I mean we we I hope it's okay to mention this but we were just on latter gay stories doing um doing um interview there and Kyle was pointing out how D Michael Quinn is a is a pioneer as a queer Mormon um and through this book younger queer Latter-Day Saints or post Mormons can read this and see oh I'm not the first to go through this there are others who have experienced these things and and learn of of Mike's experience but yeah he was on the Forefront of this and he was suffering in silence early on later he comes out in the '90s and he's he uh receives so much acceptance from his friends and loved ones when he does come out to everybody but yeah this was something he silently suffered with starting in the 1950s yeah and I just want to emphasize to limit it to just LGBT stuff would be just a huge disservice truth claims history honesty in the church feminism like excommunication church discipline like it's all there it's all there you know what I mean all there he's a for scump of Mormonism he is he was there for every step everything and I would like to mention just the way the book is laid out like John alluded to just sections you really don't even have to read it in order you could literally just kind of browse and say oh my good what about Elder you know so and so it's really amazing you can read it all the way through or you can just take these little bite-sized pieces of History he was really there for every pivotal event with his own particular fly on thewall spin on it and and he had access to everyone and everything so it's just incredible who's had more access than Michael Quinn that we know of who wrote stuff who who actually wrote it all down yeah I mean one of the things that one of the uh blurb or reviewers of the book points out that this book establishes him not only as a you know a great historian in Mormon history but a central actually a figure in Mormon history himself and I think that's absolutely true for sure yeah and I appreciate like I mean I think anyone more does this or any biography but you know seeing like seeing American history seeing American cultural history through this lens you know of this one individual's life and experiences I I enjoy that aspect of it as well like you know touching on these larger moments of of American history and culture um and it's yeah it's enriching that way for me couple other just um moments in the book that tie on the lgbtq themes that I just want to highlight one is is uh again turn to page uh 370 we're back in Sunday school turn to or seminary we're uh 370 uh 30th of July 1978 what is the LDS church to do what is the LDS what is the LDS church to those who don't fit and this section floored me and uh particularly around the you know lgbtq suicide epidemic that we have seen emerging uh let's just read from here so mosha I don't know if you're comfortable reading that that blurb yeah okay yeah that that section the whole section that section um from my journal in the priest Quorum meeting the lesson was on the 13th Article of Faith I used this as a Point of Departure for discussing the role of the church and and of what it means to be a Latter-Day Saint who often does not have all the perfect virtues listed in the Article of Faith 13 I REM I reminded them of the old story about the argument for whether to buy a new ambulance or build a better fence because of the people falling over the cliff I asked the teen te AG priests what they thought was a good representation of the church in the story predictably most of them led by auin Gwyn um said that the church was both a fence and an ambulance but I was caught off guard when someone said that the church was also the cliff I spent a few minutes discussing this point in reference to members of the church sometimes feeling that the church brings them burdens and trials of action and conscience that are hard to Bear Bishop horn commented that the bishop of the singles ward in our stake had told him that for the past several years until this last Christmas season there had been an average of five suicides in the singles ward each year in December I didn't challenge him but I wondered if he meant but I wondered if he meant or the other Bishop meant five attempted suicides because five successful suicides a year or month in one congregation would be an enormous rate and the reason why this gutted me is because I remember when I started studying the lgbtq Mormon experience as early as 2005 I would notice the obituaries in the deser newes and the cic Tribune it was like almost every month there was like some kid who loved choir theater went on a mission and then all of a sudden he died young and they didn't explain why and that's when I started deciding I wanted to study the lgbtq experience and that's when I learned about the high rates of lgbtq suicide this seems like a foreshadowing or or a I don't know a prophecy or whatever of that Barbara did did that strike you at all did that come to your mind when you edited this uh well on that passage itself it seems like he's just talking about young people in general so I don't but maybe they were all you know perhaps queer Mormons but um but yeah that passage struck me as well the cliff that the church could sometimes be a cliff that people fall off you know that's the thing that can actually hurt people and again we know that it can hurt people in the lgbtq community um people of color um you know racism that can exist so yeah what I hope from this book and I think what Mike hoped in in writing is that is that it leads to change and it leads to people reading his story and understanding people who are different from ourselves and coming to feel love and compassion for them last night we were at a book signing at Benchmark books and I asked folks who knew Mike who if they wanted to stand up and share an experience and one of the most profound moments for me was when Sandra Tanner stood up and Sandra Tanner and Mike uh Gerald and sander Tanner and Mike Quinn were like this in life uh they were I don't know if better enemies is too strong of a word but they they did not like each other at all and Sandra Tanner stood up and she said I've been reading this book and I've been gaining an appreciation for Mike Quinn she goes I'm starting to like him and she says I'm really realizing have so much in common with him that I did not know growing up in LA and his thoughts on the Vietnam War were the same as Gerald and my thoughts and she said this book by reading his story I have gained an appreciation for Mike Quinn who before she did not like in life understandably so again I think through hearing each other's stories Mormon stories we we gain an appreciation for and compassion for people who are different from ourselves yeah I'll just say I I reached out to Sandra and said you to buy this book and I'd like to have you on Mormon stories to talk about it because I read some of the stuff involving Gerald in it yeah so we're going to did an episode on that oh yeah so we are G to have Sandra back to talk about her reactions to this book Wonder and Barbara of course you're welcome to join us would love to thank you yeah but uh I'm I'm excited for that um okay one more quick thing just on this lgbtq theme turn in your pages to page 378 M will be the very last paragraph on 378 and then just the first remaining sentence on 379 next page so a little background do you want to give the background of why D Michael Quinn was in the home of church president Spen W Kimble and what he was doing there yeah I how unbelievable this is in unbelievable it shows how incredibly well connected he was with top church leaders even Spencer W Kimbell and I can't remember is he the president of the church when I'm 78 or okay so he's the president of the church and uh Mike Quinn says hey I'd love to access your your personal journals he finds out that that President Kimble had kept a journal his whole life and president Kimmel says well sure you know um and he says well I I've got all my journals at my house why don't you come up to my house so he goes up and back then of course you didn't have laptops you just brought your typewriter with you and he's just looking at president Kimble's journals and then typing them into his uh uh using his typ writer Camila comes in says hey boys I've got some fried chicken in the kitchen he goes in and has fried chicken with Spencer and Camila at their kitchen table and then um and then he comes back another time and Spencer Kimble uh set up a card table next to his desk in his office and Mike is sitting there working next to him and uh president Kimo walks over says well what are you doing and Mike just kind of tells him he's Mike's a little bit surprised too he's like wow he's giving me just incredible access incredibly open about sharing his journals with me so that's that's the kind of in what's the right word just the connections he has with very top insiders in the church and he develops this this friendship with Spencer Kimble not only through that but he also gets a blessing from president Kimble at one point yeah no yeah he talked about that in my interview with him where's where's blessed to become an apostle right well interesting because when you read the Memoir doesn't quite come out like that that's kind of what I remember him saying in my interview with yeah he well yes exactly he would often say that he had been um blessed to become an apostle so I always thought that you know I heard him say that story too when you read in the Memoir um again this is my interpretation of it it sounds like he says he's he's carrying this burden in fact this is one of the reasons he stays in a mixed orientation marriage and he's staying trying to be straight because he believes his grandmother has been telling him since he was 9 years old that someday you're going to become an apostle so Mike Quinn was that kid and meeting who get up every fast and testimony meeting and give us testimony so people started telling him from time he was nine you're going to be an apostle someday so he has this belief he's going to become an apostle someday he goes and he sees president Kimble and he says I I I think I'm supposed to become an apostle someday I think the Lord has been telling me that and Spencer Kimble says okay well you know don't aspire to any callings but just keep serving in every calling that you have and if in fact what that feeling you got was coming from God then then that will be be fulfilled yeah yeah but yeah so what's what also comes out in this Memoir though too is like every single Mission companion he has and almost every friend he has also says I I've been told through the spirit or through my patriarchal blessing that I'm going to become an apostle someday so it seems like that was a thing for young men at the time was yeah it probably was all right so so that's the context and and I was goingon to say Rebecca can you imagine like Russell and Nelson or down the jokes inviting like over I don't think we have that access today so inviting like who's a church historian inviting like Ben Park to to like uh transcribe his diary like like I remember Ted lion coming on Mormon stories and saying that the church changed its policy where it now forbids APO Apostles from keeping journals let alone letting historians transcribe their journals so this is just mind-blowing yeah yeah it is okay so anyway back to the story so Kimble is eating fried chicken transcribing Spen Kimble The Prophet's journal and and mosha will you read that little blurb that kind of blew this blew this was probably maybe the most mind-blowing part of the whole book for me but you know anyway president Kimbell got up from his desk to walk with me to the door of the office and I thanked him also for allowing me to express to him my feelings about my own background as he spoke of his efforts for the Indians at this point he clenched he CL he clutched me in his left arm while he held my hand in his right hand and he said it makes me love you all the more to know that you are Mexican and then he snuggled his cheek up to mine I left his office feeling joy in the spirit of the Lord now um I'm going to acknowledge that that people could read this in in lots of different ways and I'm not trying to in any way inject Scandal into this when there may not be any there are there is this Trope of like the most vociferous religious leaders who are sort of anti-lgbt are often found to have those proclivities themselves and it's a well-known rumor it's it's a prevalent Rumor for decades a speculatory rumor that maybe Packer or maybe Kimble experienced same sexual attraction and that might be why they were some of the church's foremost uh outspoken leaders against homosexuality this passage both the both the comment that makes me love you all the more to know that you are Mexican along with that that description of snuggling his cheek it it did make me think about that but I'm not trying to invent or or inject that well in that same passage he says that um Spencer Kimble looks at him and says you are a fin looking man really a fine looking man and for I had never heard these rumors that you just brought up ever but when I read that I was like huh that's interesting um and then there's a later passage in the book too where Spencer Kimbell shows him a lot of affection so that it could be inter Mike interprets it he says it's like the love of a father and he loved having that kind of an affection from an elderly man from an man um but it could be interpreted other ways as well I think it's that's a very interesting passage when it's the last time he sees Spencer Kimbell before he passes away any other any other thoughts about that silly I I think the other passage that barb was referring to I thought I had it marked I was trying to find the section is called The Prophet's kiss and I think that definitely read I'm trying to find it I'm looking in the index I thought I had it marked but I don't think I do so I don't want to take the time unless it's under kiss while you're looking for that I could comment on on why he said I love you all the more because you're a Mexican so um Spencer Kimble was born and raised in Arizona and he did have a special Affinity towards Native Americans and Mexicans um whom he believed the church believed were all Layman nightes and so it was Spencer Kimble who uh promoted the lonite generation and he actually called Mike at one point in the Memoir he calls him his his little Layman tonight I think um anyway so that's kind of where that statement is coming from I believe um just knowing he's a lonite so and you know the way people spoke 20 30 40 50 years ago is different than the way yeah this was in the 40 years ago yeah yeah so we have to not engage in what's it called presentism is that right it's called presentism yeah you're a good historian John I don't know I try um mosha did you have anything you want to add there I don't mean to put you on the spot okay no but I mean it does remind me of some I mean okay I guess I do I said no but I do a little bit um uh there are some passages here and I can't find them you know myself right now but you know there there there definitely are some moments when he does uh observe and and um yeah he he observes moments of um affection you know physical affection between men that you know I agree with Barbara in many of these cont contexts it's it doesn't seem to suggest sexual attraction or romantic feeling it's it's um expression of affection between men but it caught our father's attention my father's attention for understandable reasons um but it did seem like in many of these contexts he he did he did appreciate something of a chased a chased quality to that that sense of like bonding and connecting um with with you know men or or people the same sex that really was not sexual or romantic especially because he didn't have that kind of relationship with his father which is going to touch church leaders became father figures for exactly and so there is this um element of of a of a fatherson connection relationship that was was absent from his life um that I think is is part of that picture and it reminds me um of like when I was a kid and you know it mentioned like snuggling of the cheek you know between Kimble and himself and you know this is a thing that happens very commonly between uh fathers and children perhaps but there was this thing that he would often when he was putting me to bed and I'm six or seven years old and you know he had his 5:00 shadow on his cheek and he would sort of just like rub his cheek against my face and i' be like all squirming and freaking out um but also kind of like laughing and delighting because it was sort of like a little game and and and it was a a a an aspect of uh connection and bonding and a show of affection and he would kiss me on the cheek and he would also kiss me on the lips sometimes um which I always like felt not always but you know it could feel like oh well that's a that's a extreme form of like showing of an affection he didn't always do it um but he did do it sometimes and he does you know mention some moments like right here where he would observe somebody else uh uh kissing their son on the lips or or he'd hear somebody talking about how they would kiss their their their children you know on the on the lips and how he felt as a young man that that was just a really lovely and Powerful demonstration um of love from a parent to a child and I experienced that myself as something that he he valued um and would expressed to me when I was a boy I kissed my dad on the lips growing up yeah my I I wonder if it's a generational thing because my grandma used to kiss kiss all of us on the lips and like my cousins and I be like e Grandma kissed us on the lips seems but it seemed like that was just more common yeah um in earlier Generations but well going back to Sandra I mean the the part that I jumped to immediately when I got the book you know uh previous see morma stories we covered the Gerald and Sandra Tanner biography that was written was that's your first appearance Barra stor yeah we talked about Lighthouse the biography of Gerald and Sandra Tanner yeah written by written by Ron Huggin and published by signature books yeah get it that's that's a good one um won the Mormon history association's best biography award yeah absolutely um and we talked about the Dr clandestine affair yes I I don't want to rehash all that but I do want to give a little bit of context or review at least of the high level of that because this sheds more light on that whole deal it does and I think it's kind of really interesting so Barbara do you want to kind of maybe give a little bit of an overview or or retailing of that context sure yeah so Gerald and Sandra Tanner um were ex Mormons at the time they were Evangelical Christians and they started a what was called the lighthouse Ministry in Salt Lake City and their their mission was to share uh Mormon history quotations from throughout Mormon history with latterday Saints and and Lead latterday Saints out of their faith to lead Mormonism and so they published a book titled Mormonism Shadow or reality and this was in the 1970s and so Mike Quinn at the time was working under lar Leonard Arrington in the church history department and the church history Department was getting all these letters from State presidents from throughout the United States saying H how do we respond to this the Tanner book and so Leonard says well Mike why don't you try writing something up you know addressing all of these questions that are brought so Mike does so and he writes a long kind of treatise and then he brings it to church leaders of the church history department and they look it over and they're like oh we don't I don't know that we want to publish this because it kind of brings up more questions than it answers um and so Leonard tells Mike sorry we're not going to publish this work you've been working on for a while and Mike is so proud of this work so what he decides to do is to publish it anyway anonymously and to leave these pamphlets in a locker in um Salt Lake City and leave a a key and he sends it to Sam Weller's bookstore and they go in and start selling these pamphlets and so the Tanners get word that somebody's written this Anonymous response to their pamphlet and very quickly Gerald Tanner figured out that it's D Michael Quinn that's done it and the way he figures that out is because Mike Quinn uses the Latin phrase post Haw doctor ha I like Ergo po talk yeah something yeah anyway some Latin phrase and then Gerald's like that's an unusual Turner phrase that very few people would use so then he starts reading various uh Church historians Works he comes across D Michael Quinn's uh PhD dissertation and he uses that phrase several times there and so he's like aha it's D Michael Quinn so that's the beginning of um conflict between the two because at first Mike denies it he lies about it and then he just says well I will neither confirm nor deny that it was me but it's anyways it's a fascinating story but that's what led to this conflict between the Tanners and and Mike Quinn and again Sandra said less than I never got to meet him but by reading his book I'm starting to actually like him and understand more where he was coming from yeah and we mentioned this in the previous interview that he ends up funding this project himself cost him thousands of dollars to create these pamphlets I think he didn't go on a vacation with your mom because he used that that money to fund the pamphlet instead of going on vacation with Jan yeah they had a trip to Asia planned or something like that and he has these neh funds National Endowment for the Humanities left over and instead of using it to take your mom on this trip to Asia he uses it to print all these pamphlets yeah and and on page 354 second paragraph it says uh I was thrilled that my budget of about $1,200 resulted in 2,000 nicel looking booklets of 63 pages each and then I paid about $100 for stamps and mailed 350 copies by third class delivery to every LDS Institute admission home in the United States and Canada plus to the presiding officers in stakes and Wards in the West various Mormon historians I'm trying to think about like somebody some well-intentioned apologist emailing their version of like the CES letter to like every CES building and all the mission presidents like I don't know that that could cause trouble and and it certainly does yes it does so so part of what I thought was worth looking at um so let's jump to uh turn to page 356 uh December 27 1977 immunizing I loved it he uses the term immunizing yeah the L yeah he was ahead of his time as if truth is a virus right he's got to let's let's read a little bit from that mosha do you mind oh no I don't mind okay yeah uh that section the whole okay y um from my journal about the history division's Christmas party at the Arrington we got on the subject of telling the truth of history and why sorry and why the authorities resist it I was doing most of the talking at this point and said that men like Boyd Packer dislike our approach because they feel we will only cause people to ask more questions and they are afraid of the Saints asking questions they feel they are protecting the Saints whereas we feel um they are making them vulnerable to attacks by people like the Tanners or by deceptive schismatics I said they could not seem to understand that we were trying to expose the average Saints to the broad perspectives of Truth and history in order to protect them from being overwhelmed by a barrage of Truth or half-truth of our history by the pacy up to this point Leonard had been generally quiet but he interjected at this point that we were seeking to immunize the Saints by presenting the broad perspective of our history that was a tremendous idea that I have often described without realizing it end quote to his journal and then just one last sentence in this Memoir I would use the analogy in my talk to BYU students and faculty less than 4 years later okay so there's a couple things that is interesting about that to me you know obviously one is that I was struck by like whether it's the secret Mormon the BH Roberts secret Mormon meetings of 1922 or the release of no man knows my history in 46 or whatever there were moments in time where the bre knew cuz I always get this question do the top church leaders know about the problems with the church or are they ignorant you know uh and there are these moments in time where you just kind of know they knew and to me this is and of course Adventures of a church historian with Leonard Arrington makes that very clear so this isn't the first book to do that but this is a really blatant example of an Insider making it really clear that not only does everybody know there's do top Church Mormon church leaders know there's significant historical problems but the but at least some of them are intentionally trying to keep this information from the members to me that's significant and that they were baning around this idea of immunization as early as the mid '70s anyone have a comment or thought about that before I then talk about the next Point yeah so as a as a historian myself I I was just kind of amazed at how ahead of his time he was this is before the internet this is the 1970s and in fact there's a quote somewhere I put it I put it in the um Publishers introduction I believe but somewhere in the Memoir he's talking to somebody and it's in 1974 and uh his friend says when how long do you think it'll take before the church will be willing to talk about post Manifesto polygamy and the Mountain Meadows Massacre and Joseph Smith polygamy whatever you know these these challenging topics and Mike says I think this will be completed it'll be finished in 50 years guess what 50 years later is 2024 so he was almost prophetic I mean the the fact that then his Memoir would come out right now 50 years later is something but yeah he was ahead of his his time and and he was right people should know about all this and you shouldn't hide it and you can't hide it it's it's out there you know is that completed or how much further does the church have to go I think still yeah exactly done yeah exactly I think what he says I think the quote is is so diplomatic ask what do you think yeah no there we still have there's still more to do there's still more to do I think that um I think what Mike is saying is like like they'll be talking about it it'll be out there I mean I think the the gospel topics essays being on the church's website is part of the Fulfillment of that I think you know as as you mentioned John I've written a book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre that's part of the Fulfillment of what Mike was saying in 1974 um that this would this would happen and I hope that this Memoir continues to bring more to light and U MOS and I have been talking about the project that Mike Quinn never finished um his magnum opus about post Manifesto polygamy but uh mosha has found what he did complet complete and we're going to be working together to publish that so that's coming it's coming coming so but one thing I just want to share to reflect back to what you were saying about like what you were saying 50 years ago I mean I think 74 to me this is this is um an interesting int telling um example of his like his his optimism and faith in the institution and faith in the leadership and faith in human nature in a sense like he really believed that that there would you be be the The Shining of the light and that and that people would would see the need for it the leadership would see the need for it and appreciate the need for it and come around so it's his his not just faith in his Humanity but faith in the church itself and faith in the leadership of the church itself yeah I thought of that mosha when watching the Mormon stories in interview you just did about gay Latter-Day Saints gay married Latter-Day Saints were participating in their Awards and taking the sacrament serving in callings um and I was thinking about Mike and uh I think he'd be so pleased to see that change happening yeah I think he I think he believed it would happen someday I think yeah I think so yeah beautiful okay so as we just leave an entire section on page 356 about the importance of Truth and honesty and cander then we have Gerald tenner finding out that Michael Quinn well suspecting that Michael Quinn was the author of Dr clandestine and he there's a recounting of Gerald Tanner calling D Michael Quinn to to to find out if he was the author and I thought this was just stunning to be the exact next section after he's talking about honesty in church history right y mosha do you mind reading uh at least the first couple paragraphs from that section this is December 30th 1977 entitled Gerald Tor reacts all right yeah and feel free to just tell me when to stop okay if do three do three paragraphs unaware no five sorry five five yeah okay I'll count as I go unaware that Reed Durham was collaborating with the Tanners I was mentally unprepared for the phone call I received this evening from my journal in Parts quote after I got home the phone rang and a high-pitched man's voice asked are you the author of Gerald and Sandra Tanner's distorted view of Mormonism a response to manism Shadow or reality he said my information is that in a meeting in the LDS historical department Leonard Arrington asked you to write such a document I replied that I had no knowledge of such a meeting or conversation finally I asked who it was I was talking to and he said as I had suspicioned that he was Gerald Tanner um he may have asked me a few more times if I had written the pamphlet um which I flatly denied before our phone conversation ended if asked again about this moment I think I will adopt the policy of not assisting and identifying the author by the process of elimination that will be possible as Tanner and his friends asked various historians if they did or did not write the pamphlet The Last approach is what I should have said at the beginning of our phone call however caught completely off guard I lied repeatedly and reluctantly to Gerald Tanner yeah like on the one hand he's saying that needs to be more honest on the other hand he's literally lying I mean I don't mean there's no judgment here right but it's interesting right it's really interesting I think it's also interesting that he's vulnerable enough to share this with the world like he admits that he that he lied yeah well yeah and he and he says very explicitly like writing his own life he feels like it's only appropriate to write of his own life in the way that he's been writing about uh church history his entire career and seems consist only seems the right to do so that kind of cander um was an explicit part of his um his values and and and um like like the mission that was driving him and guiding him through this project you know warts and all as he would say all yeah yeah yeah and then you know the the stunning this for me Isn't ended let's turn to page 358 Rebecca will you read those last two paragraphs just cuz I want to make sure I can get you in here sure I can do that um right my worst fears about publishing the response anonymously uh were were let's see were fulfilled and surp passed bombarded with inquiries by friends foes colleagues students reporters and strangers I made the judicious reply that I wouldn't confirm or deny authorship because to do so would limit the range of guesses about um let's about an author who obviously wanted to remain anonymous Among The Limited number of LDS historians I was privately embarrassed by my initial Denial on the phone to Gerald Tanner but was appalled that Leonard this is Leonard Arrington Arington found himself in the position of making repeated denials that he had any knowledge of the booklets origin um as advocates of the new Mormon history we were caught in the tangled webs of our best intentions of faith I felt embarrassed empathy for the LDS headquarters and its Generations of compromising defenders in his plain account of Christian Perfection Methodist founder John Wesley had described such compromise as the lie for the Lord and I was God that say Li for God but that's right but we know it is I say Lord that's hilarious that must be kind of a yeah I was because I was thinking that life for God I was thinking that that I feel like in his lie he was protecting the church I think because it has to be anonymous you don't want anyone to know that perhaps the church had orchestrated did this maybe so maybe that was his mindset yeah he was protecting himself and he was also protecting his mentor Leonard because the church leaders that jomer Durham who was over the church history Department said no don't publish this but then Leonard and Mike decide y okay I'm going to publish it anyway just anonymously so yeah not a good decision yeah so um so like Leonard Arrington was lying to MH this idea of everybody lying again we talked about all the different ways Quinn's 1970s and ' 80s life mirrored what we would all experienced 40 50 years later apologetics add Mormon apologetics to that right because there's always a modern frustration about how honest whether it's Mormon apologists and or the gospel topics essays themselves how honest versus dishonest they are and of course this idea of dishonesty is a human thing but it goes back to the early foundings of Mormonism too we do have a history as humans of deception in our history Barbara what do you think well I in that episode I was uh in before and I hope you'll have this in the show notes so people could watch the episode in which it was myself J taking notes okay so it was myself uh representing this because I was editing this at the time and then Sandra Tanner and her biography Ron hugged and then Gary Berger reading from Leonard arrington's Diaries um and it was called Dr clandestine I think anyways but I said in that episode that I called Mike an apologetic critic he was not afraid to be you know very forthcoming and critical of church history but yet at the same times he was he was also an apologist because he was always defending the church so I thought that was really interesting combination that he had so super critical about you know various things in the church but yet till the end of his life um always believing in Joseph Smith's Divine mission Joseph Miss Truth claims so yeah and that was something that I mean I'm not I haven't said this quite yet but to be clear I'm not like in the church at all I'm not sure if I said it this session I said that so often lately but I'm not sure if I said it yet here this afternoon and so I I'm I don't have a lot of knowledge um background knowledge of a lot of these um details and nuances but to your point um that has always like struck me as being part of what has seemed to me kind of tragic and and hard on an emotional level about his situation where he he wrote what he wrote in deep faith and service to the church that he loved um and he was kicked out of it for it but also like he wasn't like you know a bum thrower in the sense of like you know he's he's not like trying to tear the church down if that was his mission then he would have found like a lot of other friends and support and there's maybe like something about his position that was not entirely singular but but somewhat somewhat unique and even like more of a minority position of like being willing to write things and engage with questions that the church um doesn't want you to do and therefore you are attacked for it by the church um but neither are you like making friends you know being like an outright antagonist no so he's serving the church but then suffering for it um and very alone I was going to say uniquely alone always me as like being a very uniquely alone position to be in we talked last night about one of his dear friends Lavina fiing Anderson who was who was excommunicated as as she was one of the September 6 along with Mike and and Levina said she was doing the same thing for the same reason she was pointing out instances of abuse by ecclesiastical leaders and as a fully devoted faithful Mormon and the reason why she was doing it is she was trying to make the church better and I think Mike was the same way but he was just talking about history with the hope of making things better and of course they came into the CR cross heart hairs of church leaders and were excommunicated for it but ultimately they were just trying to make the church better and they were Believers both of them until the end of their lives and I want to I want to talk I want to return to that today before we end because that's mind-blowing to me and it always was in my first interview and my second interview how he retained a literal belief including in literal gold plates as Richard Bushman does to this day but I do want to close out just um and Barbara want to seek your understanding on this point so turning to page 361 there's this part where he writes I had been working on the McKay Diaries this is David omay for only an hour or two when one of the secretaries came to my work area and told me that brother Durham Homer durh G Homer G Homer Durham wanted to see me in his office right away at one point he referred to historians this is G Homer Durham at one point he referred to historians who insisted on trying to discover whether leading persons used three or four pieces of toilet paper to cleanse themselves after a bow movement this was a crude version of apostle Boyd K Packer's views did you have a thought about Homer Durham's um characterization of boy K Packers view of historians or maybe that wasn't a surprise Barbara yeah so I think it just shows that um church leaders at the time felt like look we don't need to go into you know every nook cranny pardon the pun um every CRA you didn't say about about church history you know just F focus on the basics focus on the the faith promoting focus on the Glorious wonderful aspects of our church history we don't need to delve into the nitty-gritty of oh okay actually there was post Manifesto polygamy for example or you know they it was just felt like they were going into these these new historians of the new Mormon history um PhD historians and so forth were going places that church leaders didn't want them to go yeah so yeah and to that point like at the as this continues February 17th 1978 this is before the the you know the priesthood you know um Revelation uh this is the same year as the as black Mormons received uh the possibility of the priesthood and Temple blessings he writes um this is confrontation the clenched fist salute G Homer Durham launched into a Tade about the anonymous response to the Tanner so G Homer Durham's mad about the Tanner because he said don't publish this and all of a sudden somebody's published it yeah and clearly he's not just mad himself he's probably worried about what people above him are concerned about or have said and then he writes he said he was very upset by its public availability because he had specifically instructed Leonard Arington not to publish it and then he goes on um he's try you know Durham tries to find out who wrote it what does he tell Durham well Durham pulls Quinn into his office and says tell me you know and Quinn says I will neither confirm nor deny and Durham says as your priesthood leader I'm telling you you have to tell me you know who wrote this and and Quinn still says I will neither confirm nor deny yeah you got to respect his um his um but the very next passage is March 7th 1978 official church historian no more and um and it's where Quinn finds out that Leonard Arrington is no longer the official church historian and you know he writes um mosha would you mind reading starting from the um go ahead and just read that that section if you don't mind sure on 362 so uh from my journal quote I told Leonard that I had been informed that after 6 years of being officially sustained in general conferences By Appointment of the first presidency as church historian that he was no longer in that position Leonard's response was so typical of him that I could have cried yes he said and now I am finally relieved of having a title that implied that I that I had the responsibility of giving the official view of LDS history now we can go on with our work without that burden the timing of my mentors humiliating demotion was too close to my confrontation with G Homer Durham to be mere coincidence he clearly blamed the anonymous pamphlets publication on Leonard whom this General Authority undoubtedly charged with rank insubordination in Durham subsequent meetings with Apostle Packer and with the first presidency Leonard's comments to me the previous October showed that he was already in serious conflict with this lower ranking general Authority before its publication my pamphlet was the last straw in Durham's backbreaking relationship with Leonard What a Sad outcome of my faith promoting intentions Barbara your reactions to that yeah so I read this and I you know I knew about how uh Leonard Arrington was demoted if you will and then eventually his department is sent down to BYU um by church leaders because they feel like ah these these professional historians this new Mormon history we don't like this um they kind of wanted to create some distance and then they refused to publish uh some of the books that this department uh was working on publishing incidentally that's why signature books was started in 1981 the founder and owner George Smith said there needs to be a press that will publish these books that the these folks were working on so that's why signature books exist today anyways so I was like wow was it because was this pamphlet truly the last St so then I went to Leonard arrington's Diaries and read there Leonard doesn't mention it as being something that leads to it there's undoubtedly he talks a lot about this conflict between himself and G Homer Durham he doesn't specifically say that this pamphlet is the reason he does talk about the pamphlet earlier and Gerald Tanner calling him and and how awkward that was for him to uh have to lie about it choose to lie about it but anyway so that was Quinn's belief but it is true that shortly after this happened this demotion takes place and you know I had read Adventures of a church historian and I was sad about arrington's demotion and then like more than a decade later I learned about the you know Dr clandestine pamphlet I did not for some reason put that together until this book that it's happened the same time well that according to D Michael Quinn the pamphlet was the last straw in Leonard arrington's Administration has that been generally welln or is this book breaking no I had never heard it so when I read it I was like wow I didn't know that um so that was Quinn's perception but again arrington's perception he says it's a lot of other things but I'm sure I'm sure that played into it I'm sure it was part of it wow yeah yeah wow okay we got to get some uh feminism in here and some women's stuff if that's okay so let's go to page 376 Barbara I'm going to have you read um I don't have a book all have sorry yeah bar I'm happy to read there you go so Barbara will you read starting with the first presidency's opposition page what uh 376 okay um and this is just him you know the Equal Rights Amendment was something that you know was attempted to be passed in the mid to late 70s the ra yeah this was gut-wrenching too uh what starting with what uh the first presidency's opposition first paragraph the first presidency's opposition seemed misogynistically patriarchal it was it also openly used homophobic homophobic arguments against the ra and that is absolutely true like to see him pulling out the words misogynist and homophobic in the 70s that's kind of forward thinking right yeah he was very forward thinking absolutely very bold furthermore investigative journalists were uncovering a widespread if not Universal pattern of Deceit and concealment involv in the LDS Church's role in promoting and financing the anti campaign within 20 states of the Union the church's 1968 liquor by the drink campaign paled by comparison and I had voted against that intrusion into the political Arena both then and now those political campaigns were being directed by Apostle Gordon B hinley okay so gotta pause there first of all one of the coolest books published by signature books is Martha sag Bradley's pedestals and podiums about the ER it's I still want to have her on Mormon stories if she would ever tell that story absolutely she said she'd come okay okay so we need to make that happen but Barbara do you want to talk anything about like Gordon be hinley being behind like The Mastermind behind the anti- camp yes I did not know that I mean I knew that the church had been against the erra and and everything that it did to just quash that that something that was about to pass uh and I'd always Ben you know Gordon be Hinkley was my favorite Prophet I loved him but deadly anys um but so when I read this I was deeply disappointed to find out that um Elder Hinkley at the time was was involved in this it's very unfortunate yeah yeah keep going well one thing that's interesting is that uh Utah cator Mike ley's father Rex elely he um wrote the kind of the is it Amicus brief you would say but anyways he wrote the the background you know white paper policy for church leaders that they took and used and said okay we're going to go against the ER so that was very disappointing that was very disappointing to learn um as as well that was one of our comments um that I heard over and over from those of us reading this book of a certain age we're like now we understand what happened to us you know we didn't know everything behind the scenes we knew we were supposed to be against Dr we we knew those things we didn't understand the the politics behind it and the maneuvering and the manipulating and it is it's disappointing to find out you know things that were part of your life this was what was going on behind the scenes and Michael Quinn was there you know he knew everything that was happening and that's why this Memoir it's like you said gut-wrenching hard to read but it's good to understand and to know what happened to you and why you are where you are today mosha you talked about being a 12-year-old boy I was was a 12-year-old girl when this when the Ra was defeated living in in Denver Colorado and people were challenging me my teachers would say why does your church why is your church against equal pay for for women and and I just remember going uh I don't know I just like you said I was supposed to be against the ER and told Johnson you know was being on Donahue and yeah this was an remember a woman bearing her testimony and I was a little older than you but still about that same age and being taken off stand because she was talking about how we need to support and we need to think about women and their roles and she was forcibly removed back in the 70s in my ward so yeah it was very dramatic joh it was not Sonia Johnson but it was another woman that dared to stand up and try to say something and was removed from the stand it's really unfortunate and one thing that comes out in here that I didn't realize before too was a lot of it was because of homophobia and one of the things that said is is if the erra passes then same-sex marriage will pass will become legal yeah and also like the wrong people use the wrong bathrooms right and it was all about bathrooms and and so I was stunned to find out that that the anti-queer feelings were a big part of wanting to kill the ER that I was not aware of and it was all protecting the nuclear family that idea you know that that had to be the most important exactly traditional gend so that's why this next part is fascinating because did do do we know if D Michael Quinn identified self-identified as a feminist in by the mid big time by that time I don't know but in my life for sure that was always like something that I would hear you know in the household and Barbara you'd say mid 7s yeah throughout throughout the book he's talking about being a feminist although so but sometimes you know he definitely identifies as a feminist but some but sometimes you're like H but what he just what you just wrote there Mike that was not feminism you know he's like oh well we gave our children you know Jan's middle name because that was so forward thinking and and then he admits later he says and then I had a friend named Mark ashurst McGee who took his wife's name and hyphenated it he said oh that's true feminism so yeah yeah yeah well that's why I was going to have you read the next uh actually MOS I'll have you read it um the paragraph starting on uh well basically this I I don't know I read this as his motivated reasoning for why he had to oppose the ER as a feminist um but but this is my my yeah my perspective is this is his rationale for why he opposed it and this is where a little bit of that sexism does come out that I was talking about yeah interesting okay so start with nonetheless and just read maybe to the bottom of that page mosha if you don't mind nonetheless uh I kept my misgivings and descent to myself first I felt ambivalent because I acknowledged that a person could legitimately argue against such an amendment on rational grounds and that the LDS church had the legal right to oppose it for whatever reason for example I oppose the erra because it would end the gender discrimination that benefited women in the workplace in the in the late 1950s my factory worker mother commented that she had persuaded her bosses to give women more frequent bathroom breaks than men without requiring women to explain why they needed to take an extra break for example a woman might suddenly begin menstrating just minutes after returning from a lunch break or scheduled coffee break the Equal Rights Amendment would end such special privileges for women who certainly needed them as I told Marine on April 26th I feel that the design of the amendment can be achieved by legislation on specific issues and thus be amendable to gradualism and possible exceptions that would be in favor of women's status and rights to a greater extent than if all sexist bias were constitutionally removed second and most important because the first presidency was linking the Equal Rights Amendment to homosexuality I could not as a closeted gay at BYU risk guilt by association suspicions if I criticize the church's activism against erra so I remain silent about it even cautious in responding to friends who asked My Views now Barbara and Rebecca I saw some heads nodding rolling yeah any response to was that motivated reasoning um well I I'm I'm rolling my eye because what he's what he's saying right there is exactly what the church was saying like oh well if we pass the ER then mothers will be drafted and sent into war and they'll leave their children behind the US government isn't going to draft mothers of young children and what and then they're going to take care of the kids I mean just some of those things that were listed as concerns that could happen if the ra passed were just not legitimate but Mike was Towing that line here yeah yeah and and I think like he said in exactly what you read at the end end having to sort of protect himself because if he were to come out maybe he you know feeling that way um it would be a red flag to people I think they might uh they might think things that he didn't want them to think he was always being very secretive very protective of his homosexuality his closeted homosexuality yeah that identity so I thought that was fun um a couple I'm just going to say a couple more I'm just going to throw out a few more tidbits just as teasers because I want everyone to buy and read this book and I want to just convince you to so here's some other cool things before we do a little bit of a wrap up few more brilliant things and I today's episode just comes from like 20 pages of of how many pages total like right 540 pages I think yeah yeah so we're only taking 20 Pages the of cool stuff yeah but um he talks about his concern for polygamous Nigerians um being forced to get get rid of their plural wives before they can join the church before they can join the church and how that didn't necessarily represent the family values that he Associates with the church he talks about his research into post Manifesto polygamy he talks about how the original Mormon temple ceremony lasted like nine hours which I for some reason didn't know um he talked about the F the the earlier Temple recommend questions not mentioning a belief in God not asking people if they believed God which he raised the concern that meant that an atheist could get a temple recommend and he seemed maybe concerned about that I don't know and then to throw in another teaser he also talks about it for some for a a limited period And I think it was under Spencer W Kimble there was the question if everybody particip if anyone ever had had oral sex even if they're married and he talks about his 82-year-old grandmother being asked that question and she's appalled so yeah another interesting story story there's a story of him applying uh to be a professor or interviewing to be a professor of BYU I think he interviews with d a jokes the man who's right now first in line to become Prophet well no it was Boy K Packer well okay so I'm I'm looking at page 384 d h Jes is the president of BYU at the time that's true yeah but the general Authority interview he has is with ironically it's with Boyd kacker okay right okay and then he says D ches said to me Michael Bob and I have put ourselves on the line to back you so D ches is backing D Michel Quinn to be a professor of BYU yes uh in effect we have pulled back our armor and bared our flesh you or anyone else could easily put a knife into us in this situation and then the chilling line if you let us down Barbara do you want to finish the line I'll never forgive you that's chilly terrifying is I mean I'm not trying to overdramatize it maybe maybe he was kidding Mike is is is later excommunicated and then the the irony that Michael admits on the very next page to being involved in over 32 excommunications of other members in various Bishop bricks Andor on stake High Council so he himself sat on the end of 32 excommunications he talks about serving in the British Mission and he says he excommunicates far more people than he baptized a faith crisis for him but I thought that was just undoing the baseball baptisms yeah yeah so back then it appears that you couldn't just take people's names off the roles of the church you had to literally excommunicate them they couldn't just have their names removed so yeah yeah it's pretty horrible and you know and then he kind of knows the writings on the wall I just thought this was interesting mosha on page 386 you can kind of tell actually start on uh so one more section um sorry go to 385 9th 19th of July 1979 planning for dialogue article on post 1890 polygamy like he kind of has a foreshadowing of his own demise as it relates to his relationship with the church mosha this will be the last thing maybe I have have you read okay from my journal depending upon the nature of the article on post 1890 polygamy that will be published next January in Utah historical quarterly by B Carman Hardy and Victor W Jorgenson I'm giving more serious consideration to making my last scholarly article on Mormonism an overview of post 1890 polygamy since it appears that the first presidency will never allow the crucial documents to be made available for an honest exploration of this matter I may present what I presently understand for whatever benefit it may have to the church membership and understanding if I do this I will send the article to dialogue for publication it will probably end my career at BYU as well as pose barriers to me in other areas but if the presidency will not allow access to anything better I may as well do what I can for the benefit of the Saints who may benefit from such an open examination such an article on the significance of the 1890 Manifesto would not be a bad last Harrah for me as a Mormon historian after that I can foresee nothing of significance or fulfillment end quote of his journal that he's quoting then just a last gloss for this um Memoir nonetheless hoping against hope I continued for three years to write the first presidency with requests to give me access to the documents about plural marriage in its Vault Barbara thoughts on that it's an important story that needs to be told um just coincidentally I don't know how I fell into both of these subjects but my my uh areas of expertise in Mormon history are the Mountain Meadows Massacre and post Manifesto polygamy so two very um challenging troubling subjects um but Mike Quinn is definitely he is the Forerunner of this he is the one in my own work I cited him quite a bit I'm so grateful for the research he did and did make a available through dialogue there's still a lot that um is not available but uh his work in this area I I was telling mosha I think it's one of the last Frontiers uh in Mormon history that has not been written about thoroughly that is a challenging aspect of our history so I'm really excited to work with mosha to publish what we found of what Mike wrote about it in on his laptop so there's so much we um we won't be able to get to today day but that's good that's a feature not a bug because we want everyone to buy this book chosen path um D Michael Quinn signature books please buy it right now really quickly I know we got to run mosha do you want to talk it all about just his final years um and and um when I heard he had passed and even the circumstances around how it was found out that he had passed like it there was a part of me that probably projected into it just real sadness that he it's almost seemed like he had died alone and without support but I have no idea whether there's any truth to that at all so I was just you know well he he died with a deep abiding love and support from his family um we children I'll just speak for myself I hear it from my sisters as well but I I felt a deep and very present love from him and I really feel very uh certain that he felt that Mutual from me reciprocally from me so I know that he felt love and support from us and he was a continuing presence in our lives as as we were in his lives you know every Christmas and you know sometimes in the summertime depending on travel schedules and stuff despite him living in Southern California I'm in the Bay Area everyone else has been in the Salt Lake City area um there was this ongoing um presence um so so there was that um but in terms of like alone romantically um no he was not in a relationship that was just something that he was used to in a sense of just given uh you know his lifetime of of holding himself back and denying himself a romantic connection as he saw it that was just sort of like what he um had signed up for and what he was just like living out as a as a decision he had made earlier in his life but he had any number of you know friends and contacts you know who were in touch with him um so he was regularly communicating and in touch and you know socializing um with um you know his his community um while they were not necessarily you know that close to him in Rancho cuka manga outside of La um where he was living for um many years um he he was in touch generally with people so it was a mix picture I would say I would say it was not the opposite of what you're um asking about there was definitely Solitude and there was an aloneness that was there um he was a lone wolf in in a lot of ways in his life um so that was there and that you know that just continued until his pass um but he also he also had he had love and I know that he he felt love and connection in his life as well I love hearing that yeah because he deserved we all deserve love and he deserved love so Sarah Sarah Patterson the historian who just wrote September 6 in the struggle for the soul of Mormonism she wrote an essay about Mike um that's in another book titled DNA Mormon perspectives on the legacy of historian D Michael Quinn that she presented at a conference remembering Michael Quinn a year after he died and she makes the argument we need to not think of Mike as Alone um because he wasn't as as mosha just explained and and it's when we put a project onto him the church's standards of what it means to you know be uh have a family and you know the church is standards by that we might see him as being alone but she talked about how much he was loved and in the relationship with his family and how he was still reaching out to historians and and making a difference in that community so I loved her argument when she said that we need to not see him as alone at the end because it wasn't yeah and that reminds me the last thing that I I could share on that on that point is um you know he was up in the Bay Area maybe it was in 2017 uh because there was um there was somebody living in Walnut Creek you know east of Berkeley a little bit um who who was inviting him to his home for a gathering of um of Mormons or or you know people in the community who wanted to to hear my father speak and and they they were really fascinated by by what he would have to say and share and and so I went to that and it was one of those few kind of like house Gatherings that I know that my father attended a lot of those many of them over the years because of of his community of support um um so I went to one of them in in this home and it was the one that I went to as an adult and shared in and it was this large house um big like open floor plan kind of house and it was just packed like my my partner and and I at the time like we we were sitting at the back by the the entrance because there was just no room really very little room for us to um to be any closer um and and so I saw I saw and I shared in this you know this community of um admiration for my father and seeing my father speak you know he's such such a good speaker and so um personable um and so affable and and so in his element you know he sort of just like flows in a way that just like really lovely to see in this kind of context and so I I witnessed that and I shared in that and that was you know 5 years or so four years before his passing and and that was just something that was um um you know a through line or a continuing you know um element you know of his life so he was alone in many ways and at the same time um he wasn't and his his legacy is with us and will always be with us uh through as many books he wrote now through this Memoir as well so D Michael Quinn will always be remembered oh yeah yeah Legacy will live on well buy this book right now go to Amazon or go to Signature books or go to Benchmark books the book is chosen B and Provo has it as well yeah yeah yeah chosen path and Memoir dichael Quinn Barbara thanks for all you're doing to make good things happen thank you John and can I also mention that uh if this airs before February 8 8 we will be having another event at signature books we will have all of the annotators of the book Connell Donovan Calvin Burke and Sue Bergen uh as well as Mosa's sisters Mary and Lisa will be there talking again if you want to come in person get a book signed and talk to people who were engaged with it beautiful please join us thanks Barbara mosha it's been a delight to get to know you a little bit thanks for coming on more stories yeah thanks for having me nice to be here and thanks for sharing amazing insight and wisdom and perspective and uh Rebecca you always are such an amazing companion to be doing this work with any final words I just have to say that what you're doing is very important John in hosting a book club having the Mormon stories book club it's so important books like this and and we read these every couple months or so and it's just a whole new world and learning and understanding and deconstructing and it's really important reading so we appreciate you hosting the book club and and everything that you bring to it and the next book is the next book is uncultured everybody go grab this by Daniela mesonic young everybody get it all right thanks everyone it's been great um thank you John pleasure thank you support Mormon historians support Mormon scholarship everywhere uh thanks for your support of Mormon stories uh be good to each other be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast take care everybody

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 44,618

Keywords: Mormon, mormon, the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, Mormon Stories, Mormon Stories Podcast, LDS Church, Exmormon, LDS, John Dehlin

Id: AUQZQimtz0E

Length: 106min 20sec (6380 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2024