171: WordPerfect Co-Founder Bruce Bastian Pt. 2 - Coming out as a Gay Mormon Father
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2010
⏱️ 41 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Mormon Stories Podcasts made possible through the financial contributions of its listeners. |
| 0:07.0 | To keep it alive and available to future generations, please consider a donation today at MormonStories.org. |
| 0:14.0 | Let's now make sort of a major shift. |
| 0:19.0 | You've mentioned very briefly some LGBT themes and you talked a little bit about being openly gay. |
| 0:26.0 | What we haven't talked about at all is your experience with these types of issues growing up in the church, outward perfect, |
| 0:39.0 | and then your work now as it relates to proposition 8 and activism on behalf of the LGBT community. |
| 0:48.0 | So before we talk about that, what are your first recollections of feeling that you were different? |
| 0:58.0 | You know, I've always felt kind of different of even when I was a kid. |
| 1:09.0 | I did things differently. My grandmother, when I was like 9 and 10 years old, she'd call me Bruce Ann, which was very embarrassing. |
| 1:21.0 | I don't know if she saw some things or just was trying to tease me or what, but I didn't take it as a compliment. |
| 1:34.0 | I mean, I always knew I was different, but I didn't really understand it. |
| 1:41.0 | And then you get into junior high and all the boys start talking about all the girls and that just wasn't what interested me. |
| 1:52.0 | But you know, you play along with the, you don't want to get teased or anything so you play along. |
| 2:00.0 | You, it gets harder in high school. I mean, I was never good in athletics. |
| 2:06.0 | I know you don't have to be gay and I know there are gay athletes that are wonderful athletes. |
| 2:12.0 | So that's not, that doesn't really, there's no real parallel there, but at the time I thought that's, you know, that has my whole problem with being not being athletic is the same as all this other stuff. |
| 2:26.0 | You know, they're not related. But it's, you know, you start realizing you're actually, you would rather spend time with the boys than with the girls. |
| 2:39.0 | And the attraction is not just buddy buddy, it goes beyond that. |
| 2:45.0 | So you have to keep it in check and you have to be very, very careful. You live in fear. You just live in fear. |
| 2:51.0 | Do you remember the first moment where you, I mean, this would have been what, late 60s, early 70s where you were an adolescent. |
| 3:00.0 | This is our early 60s early 60s. |
| 3:03.0 | I graduated from high school in 66. |
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