Episode 296: Dr. Tyler Lefevor, Utah State University Professor, Queer

Listen, Learn & Love Hosted by Richard Ostler

Richard Ostler

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2020

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My friend Tyler Lefevor joins us to share his story as a queer Latter-day Saint. Tyler, who is no longer a Church member but is supportive of those who stay in the Church, shares his journey which includes serving a mission, dating women and serving as an EQ President. Tyler, in his late 20s, ultimately felt his ‘best life path’ was to be with a man and is engaged to be married. Tyler got a psychology degree at BYU and then his doctorate from the University of Miami. Tyler completed a year-long internship at the counseling center at BYU, a year-long post-doc at Stanford, and three years as an assistant professor at Rhodes College. Tyler also is a practicing counseling physiologist where he maintains a teletherapy practice in Utah. Tyler has teamed with Ty Mansfield, Lee Beckstead, Ron Schow, Christopher Rosik, and Marybeth Raynes on a 10-year study of current/former LDS LGBTQ/SSA members. If you are LGBTQ/SSA, I encourage you to enroll in the study (can be anonymous) at 4optionssurvey.com Tyler is a bridge builder. He is not trying to lead others out of the Church but to help find common ground in the intersection of LDS and LGBTQ/SSA. I encourage everyone to listen to Tyler’s podcast and how we can find more common ground and less divisiveness as we are all members of the same human family. Thanks for being on the podcast Tyler. You are a great man with a wonderful life mission.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to another episode of Listen, Learn, and Love, hosted by Richard Osler.
0:11.7	My guest on today's podcast is my friend Tyler Lefevre. Welcome to the podcast, Tyler.
0:16.9	Thanks, Richard. Happy to be here.
0:19.3	What I'll do, like I usually do, is give an update. We visit for about 10 minutes and I'll do this and then Tyler will tell me how close it was to accurate. Tyler is 33 years old. Tyler is a professor, an assistant professor at Utah State, university starting this fall, but I'll
0:41.3	give you a little bit of his background leading up to that. Tyler grew up in West Jordan, Utah,
0:46.4	served admission to New York, Spanish speaking, went to BYU graduate in psychology, then spent
0:53.8	about five years at the University of Miami where he got a PhD, so he's Dr. Tyler Lefevre. I don't know if he's used to that title.
1:02.6	That's true.
1:06.4	Tyler is stepped away from the church. He resigned from the church three years ago, but up until that point, he was active in the church,
1:15.1	served as an Elders Corn President in Miami, came back to BYU, spent a year at BYU, also spent a year at Stanford,
1:23.9	taught for three years at Rhodes College in Memphis. And as I mentioned, is starting a job
1:29.7	at Utah State. And when he went through that list of time he spent in, it sounds like Tyler's
1:37.5	like 43, but he really is 33 listeners. And he did sort of a mission in there. So, and we're going to talk about Tyler's, and I want people to know that this is a
1:49.9	podcast about someone who's resigned from the church, and you might ask, well, why would
1:53.6	I, an active Latter-day Saint, give voice to someone who's left our church and is going
1:59.4	to marry a man?
2:00.5	And there's a couple reasons for that.
2:02.5	One is, this is a podcast about bridging divides. And we're all the same human family. We
2:08.6	largely have the same goals. And so I want to have Tyler share his story. He is supportive of
2:15.6	other queer people staying in the church. He's supported the
2:19.4	church, but he's also felt his best life path is to be with a man and step away from the church.
2:25.4	And so I've learned just to honor that and leave any judgment to our Savior who understands
	...

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