754: Jen Parkinson - Living in a Mixed-Orientation and a Mixed-Faith Marriage Pt. 1
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2017
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We are excited to release an interview with Jen Parkinson that has many fascinating components, including:
*Her devout LDS upbringing and bout with perfectionism while a youth and as a missionary
*Her first marriage to a gay man, unbeknownst to her
*Experiences with LDS Family Services in addressing her husband’s sexual orientation
*Her resulting divorce and intense feelings of guilt and shame
*The experience of seeking a sealing cancellation and how it made her relive the nightmare of her divorce
*Dating and marrying her current husband
*Working for BYU-Idaho and the gender disparity she observed
*Her husband’s faith transition and her reaction to it by “quintupling down” on her beliefs
*How leaving her job at BYU gave her the freedom to learn and question
*Her own faith transition and hope for the future
Transcript
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| 0:36.3 | Be kindly light amid the encircling glue. Lead thou me on the night is dark. |
| 0:48.3 | Welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John |
| 0:52.6 | Delin. It is June 9th, 2017 and I am very excited for today's interview. Today |
| 1:00.0 | we're interviewing Jen Parkinson and Jen someone who I recently met because she |
| 1:05.5 | came in about a chair from me and got to know her a little bit but she's got a |
| 1:10.2 | really cool story. It's one of those epic stories. We're gonna try and cover it |
| 1:14.3 | in about two hours. Maybe we'll go a little bit over but it's got a lot of cool |
| 1:18.0 | parts to it and just so you can know ahead of time what we're gonna be |
| 1:21.4 | covering in this interview. I'm pretty sure Jen was raised about LDS so we're |
| 1:27.0 | gonna touch on that for a bit but Jen entered into a mixed orientation marriage |
| 1:33.6 | meaning that she married a gay man and that marriage didn't didn't work out and |
| 1:42.1 | we've never really covered that before. We've never interviewed someone who was |
| 1:46.2 | in a mixed orientation marriage and so this is gonna be I mean maybe we have but |
| 1:51.3 | this will be kind of the focus of the interview so we're gonna talk about that |
... |
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