731: Meg and Jake Abhau’s Meeting with D. Todd Christofferson about LGBT Issues

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2017

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As part of our series on meetings with Mormon General Authorities, we interview Meg and Jake Abhau as they relay the story of their September 2013 meeting with Mormon Apostle Elder D. Todd Christofferson.

Meg and Jake appeared on episodes 508-510 of Mormon Stories discussing their experiences in early 2013 when their 13 year old son, Jon, came out to them as gay while they were living as committed, orthodox Mormons. During this period Meg and Jake met Tom Christofferson, brother of Mormon Apostle D. Todd Christofferson. At the time Meg and Jake met Tom he was an excommunicated gay Mormon man living in a committed relationship for over 18 years. After hearing the Abhau’s story, Tom graciously offered to arrange a meeting between them and his brother, Elder D. Todd Christofferson.

In this episode Meg and Jake recount in detail their 1+ hour with apostle D. Todd Christofferson, which included:

Elder D. Todd Christofferson acknowledging that the LDS Church may not be a safe place for our LGBT youth,
Elder Christofferson acknowledging to Meg and Jake that personal revelation trumps revelation from Mormon leadership (but that he would never be able to admit this publicly to church members), and
Meg informing Elder Christofferson that he and other LDS leadership had/have “blood on their hands” for the way that they have mishandled LGBT issues, contributing to a modern wave of LGBT youth suicides.

Meg and Jake also express their disappointment with Elder Christofferson’s role in speaking as the representative for the LDS church during the November 2015 policy decision denouncing same-sex couples as apostates, and disallowing their children from being baptised into the Mormon church. They also discuss their respective decisions to leave the Mormon church after decades of orthodox membership.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners.
0:07.0	To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support.
0:19.0	All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.
0:29.0	Thanks for your support.
0:59.0	We are having another episode in our series on conversations with General Authorities.
1:05.0	We've already done one with Trevor Hogan and then we've also done one with Lance Miles.
1:11.0	But today's episode is going to be with the Ab House.
1:16.0	The Ab House, Jake and Meg are returning to Mormon Stories.
1:21.0	Many of you are hardcore Mormon Stories fans. You'll know that episodes 508 through 510 were about Meg and Jake Ab House and their wonderful beautiful son John.
1:33.0	And just talking about how they support their gay son and dealing with faith crisis and finding their voice as LGBT allies.
1:42.0	It's a great episode. It's on video.
1:44.0	I think my cousin Daniel Parkinson recorded it and it's worth checking out.
1:49.0	But we have Jake and Meg returning to Mormon Stories because they have a story to tell us about a meeting they had with a General Authority.
1:59.0	And the name of that General Authority is Dittod Christopherson.
2:05.0	And before we dive into the interview, I'll just sort of I want to kind of state my intention up front and then Megan Jake you guys can can add to it.
2:15.0	The thing that I just wanted to say is you know our intent here is to you know within the church were obviously a patriarchy and within this patriarchy.
2:25.0	You know first presidency members apostles and General authorities rule the organization.
2:30.0	And it is widely known within Mormonism and sort of culturally absolutely an expectation that these General authorities have special relationships with the divine.
2:41.0	And so not only are they leaders but they're viewed as not only a classical leader, a classical leaders, bureaucratic leaders, but they also are viewed as spiritual leaders.
2:51.0	And so and but unfortunately they're rarely on the record.
2:56.0	They don't do a lot of meetings with with media or the press.
3:01.0	They don't go off script. You may hear from them at a state conference or general conference, but you don't get to hear from them to kind of gather the information you might need to live your life.
	...

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