Untangling Homophobia from Faith - with advocate Allison Dayton
Breaking Down Patriarchy
Amy McPhie Allebest
4.9 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2025
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amy is joined by advocate Allison Dayton, founder of Lift & Love, to discuss the god-sized holes left behind when LGBTQIA+ people are forced out of their faith traditions, plus how the LDS Church can be changed through love and role modelling to embrace its gay family.
Donate to Breaking Down Patriarchy
Allison Dayton started the Lift & Love Foundation to support LGBTQ individuals and their families in the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Allison lost her brother, who was gay, to suicide at the same time her 17-year-old son was coming out. Looking for resources to help her family, she couldn’t find anything that embraced her religious beliefs and her son’s divine identity. Lift and Love has grown to fill that much-needed space supporting thousands of individuals and families as they navigate their unique journeys of protecting their identity or that of their precious children and integrating their new reality into their devotion to Jesus Christ. Allison is a writer, speaker, including at BYU Women’s Conferences. In 2022 she moderated an LGBTQ Conversation Circle at the UN Women’s Conference. Allison and her husband, Kenn, live in the foothills of Salt Lake City, Utah, have three grown children, a son-in-law and a granddaughter, Georgia, who rules their world.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee All the Best. This week, our family received a wedding |
| 0:08.0 | announcement in the mail for a same-sex couple. And one of the members of this couple getting married |
| 0:14.4 | is very dear to our family. And I was so impressed and thought it was so beautiful. This |
| 0:19.8 | wedding announcement was together with their families. |
| 0:23.1 | These people announced their marriage. |
| 0:25.0 | And the way that it was worded was full of celebration and joy from the parents. |
| 0:30.5 | And then there was a photo. |
| 0:32.4 | And I was so struck and thought, this would not have been possible in my faith community even a few |
| 0:41.3 | years ago. I just cannot imagine that ever happening. And so I went and these two women had written |
| 0:48.1 | a blog about their story and how they met. And as they shared their story, they talked about how they |
| 0:53.5 | met and then started dating and they said, and then we realized that we were in love. And as they shared their story, they talked about how they met and then started dating |
| 0:54.6 | and they said, and then we realized that we were in love. And this was going to be very complicated |
| 0:59.6 | with our membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And then we realized, |
| 1:04.6 | obviously, we were meant to be together, so we were going to get married. And obviously, |
| 1:09.1 | we were going to stay in the church. |
| 1:11.5 | And I was shocked and so moved. It moved me to tears and so grateful. |
| 1:18.6 | And I thought, wow, have things changed in a very short amount of time? |
| 1:23.4 | And that is greatly to do with grassroots efforts to change communities, to change attitudes and to change culture on the ground. |
| 1:33.8 | And one of the organizations that has been doing that critically important work is lift and love. |
| 1:40.3 | It was started by Alison Dayton. |
| 1:42.0 | And I am thrilled to have Alison here as our guest today on Breaking Down Patriarchy. Welcome, Allison. |
| 1:46.7 | I'm so excited, and that is the best segue into this, because I would say even five years ago, that the wish of those women to be married and to stay in the church was unthinkable. And it's still an uphill challenge. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Amy McPhie Allebest, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Amy McPhie Allebest and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.