1343: Karen Adam - From Scottish Mormon Mother to Political Activist

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2020

⏱️ 221 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Karen Adam was raised in a same-sex household in Scotland (her mother identified as Lesbian). She joined the Mormon church at age 17 in 1992 after a teenage pregnancy. Karen lived as a member of the LDS Church in Scotland for almost 20 years - maturing from a young teenage mother to serving as LDS Sunday School teacher, Young Women’s President, Compassionate Service Leader, Relief Society Teacher, Primary Presidency, etc.

Karen was married and sealed for eternity in an LDS temple, and for years helped raise six children, living a very traditional LDS family life.

When Karen’s marriage fell apart she found solace in serving the wider community in Scotland outside the confines of her Scottish Mormon ward. This led on to a political awakening, and ultimately to her leaving the LDS church, and running for political office in Scotland.

Topics covered in this episode include:

Converting to the LDS Church in Scotland,
Teenage pregnancy.
Being a devout Mormon in Scotland.
Navigating an abusive marriage that included drug addiction.
Navigating divorce and remarriage within the Mormon church in Scotland.
Dealing with harmful messages and policies regarding female sexuality as a Mormon Scott, including damaging bishop interviews.
Responding to the Mormon church's harmful LGBTQ policies as a Mormon Scott having been raised in a same-sex household.
Experiencing a Mormon faith crisis in Scotland.
Rebuilding life as a post-Mormon divorced Scottish mother.
Throwing her hat into the political ring in mid-life as a Scottish ex-Mormon woman.

This is Karen's story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Warmestory's podcast. I'm your host, John
0:14.1	Delin. It is July 13th, 2020. And I am as always super excited for another episode of Warmestory's
0:24.3	Podcast. I think you really are going to be in 40 treat today. Today my interview is my guest is
0:33.0	Karen Adam. And Karen Adam is fascinating for all sorts of reasons, but one really important
0:39.0	reason among many, well, I'll just read a bunch. So basically Karen is from Scotland. So it's the first
0:46.7	interview that I can remember in Warmestory's podcast where we're interviewing someone from Scotland.
0:52.1	We obviously recently interviewed someone from Wales. We've done a few from England, but we've never
1:00.2	done Scotland or Ireland as far as I remember. So it continues that series of interviewing warmins
1:07.1	from around the world, warmins of post-warms from around the world. And from the UK, we want to
1:13.1	continue that series. So if you live somewhere abroad and you're a listener to Warmestory's podcast
1:17.9	and you want to be interviewed, please message me and we'll put you on the docket. But Karen Adam is
1:23.7	fascinating for a lot of reasons. She was raised in a same-sex household. So her mother identified
1:29.7	as lesbian and she was raised in a sense by two moms, but also by her dad, but she lived with her
1:37.3	two moms. She did become pregnant as a teenage girl in Scotland. And she converted to the Mormon
1:45.5	church at age 17 in 1992. So she lived as a Mormon convert in Scotland for, let's just say, 20 years.
1:56.6	She got married. She got married in the temple. She helped raise six children. And so she definitely
2:03.8	can talk about the experience of being raised, living, living an orthodox Mormon life in Scotland
2:13.0	in the 90s and 2000s. So we'll talk about that. She also had a lot of rough patches as we all do.
2:24.0	She is navigated divorce. She is navigated abuse and drug addiction in marriage.
2:32.0	So that's going to be a thing. She'll talk about how members of her family experienced difficult
2:41.0	interactions with Mormon church leadership around issues of female sexuality. So we'll be talking
2:47.8	about that. And let's just say damaging bishop interviews. We'll be talking about what it was
	...

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