GT  00:34  Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m so excited to have one of the original members of the September Six. Could you go ahead and tell us who you are and where we are?

Lynne  00:45  I am Lynne Whitesides, and I was the first of the September Six.

GT  00:49  Okay.

Lynne  00:50  We are at the Utah Valley University in Provo.

GT  00:56  Right, Orem, actually.

Lynne  00:57  Are we in Provo? We’re in Orem.

GT  01:00  Well, very good. I’ve been doing this podcast for eight years now. And this is our first time talking. You’re hard to track down.

Lynne  01:11  I don’t know. I’m glad to be here.

GT  01:14  Well, thanks. Well, as we look back on this, can you talk about the events? I don’t know how far back it goes. Does it go back to the 80s? Or was it just really concentrated in the early 90s, that led you into trouble with Church authorities?

Lynne  01:30  Well, I can go back a little farther, even in my own [story.] But I don’t know that we want to go there. I’ll start with from when I moved from Chicago to Salt Lake City. And when I did that, my friend, Lorie Stromberg; do you know Lorie?

GT  01:48  A little bit. We’re Facebook friends.

Lynne  01:50  Lorie said, “Why don’t you volunteer for Sunstone?” And I had three little kids and my husband was doing his residency and he had gotten his residency here in Salt Lake. And I so I went down, and I volunteered to just be one of the people who helps at Sunstone. And at the end of that symposium, so that was ’84, or something like that.

GT  02:12  Okay.

Lynne  02:13  Then, I think Marti Bradley had a talk with Elbert Peck and said, “We think Lynne should be the new chair of the symposium.” So, they invited me to be the chair of the symposium for the next year, which I did. I mean, I did it for four years. So whatever the four years were.

GT  02:30  So, you were the leader of Sunstone?

Lynne  02:31  I was the chair of the symposium. Elbert was the editor and Daniel Rector was the publisher. And then there are [others.] At the time, her name was Marti Esplin and now her name is Marti Ashby now. She was an editor. There was a really cool crew that worked there, Connie Disney.

GT  02:49  So, this is after Peggy Fletcher’s Stack.

Lynne  02:51  Yes, just right after when Elbert took over. And it was so much fun working with Elbert and Daniel. Because I had no idea how to pull a Symposium together. But Elbert, in particular, was so gracious and helpful and just kind of showed me the ropes. And by the time I was done [with] four years, I could run a symposium, so it was great.

GT  03:16  Well, it sounds like Sunstone and correct me if I’m wrong. It seems like it used to be a magazine. And it seems like Peggy was trying to get people to write for the magazine. And she started the symposium and now the symposium is the whole thing.

Lynne  03:31  Yeah.

GT  03:31  There’s not that many people that read the magazine anymore.

Lynne  03:33  I don’t even know. I don’t follow the magazine anymore at all. I haven’t been to the symposium for years, since 10 years after, and then this year. Because I have been invited to speak. But, those four years were really kind of heady because Peggy, that’s what she was trying to do. And we were getting a lot of professors from BYU and the University of Utah, but also just all kinds of really interesting people.

Lynne  04:03  Yeah, that was the year before I took it over.

GT  04:07  Okay. That was the year he had made a big discovery that he announced at Sunstone, wasn’t it?

Lynne  04:13  I believe it was either two or one year before, because Steve Christensen was part of Sunstone, at the time, too. And, and I had just met Steve. And then all that stuff happened with Hofmann.

Lynne  04:32  Right. And by ’87, I was doing the symposium. I was chairing the symposium, 1987-88-89. So four years.

GT  04:38  Did you know Steve pretty well?

Lynne  04:40  No, I was just getting to know him a little bit. And then that happened. Yeah.

GT  04:43  That’s terrible. It was a terrible thing. So you didn’t really know Mark Hofmann, either.

Lynne  04:47  No, not at all. I mean, I probably went to his talk or something. I had lived in Salt Lake. Then, I moved to Mexico for two years because my husband did two years of med school in Guadalajara, then went to Chicago for two years. And I had gone to Sunstone a bunch before then and then didn’t during those four years, and that’s when all that was going on. Then [we] moved from Chicago to Salt Lake City. And that’s when I started working for them. So you see, I was in and out.

GT  05:19  Okay. And so you led Sunstone from like, ’85 to ’89 or so?

Lynne  05:26  Yeah, something like that. I wish I knew. I should have checked before I got here. But, yeah, I didn’t lead Sunstone, but I chaired the symposium.

Lynne  05:39  I think so. But working so closely with Elbert and Dan was super. I mean, they had so much input.

GT  05:51  Dan Wotherspoon.

Lynne  05:52  No, Dan Rector.

GT  05:54  Oh, Dan Rector.

Lynne  05:54  Dan Rector knew a lot of people because of his dad, Hartmon Rector. He was the publisher, at the time.

GT  06:02  He [Hartman] was a former general authority.

Lynne  06:03  Yeah. Well, Hartman was [a general authority] at the time.

GT  06:06  Oh at the time?

Lynne  06:06  Yeah. And then Dan knew a lot of [people.] He knew Paul Dunn. He actually knew what was going on with Paul Dunn and he confronted Paul Dunn.

GT  06:17  Oh.

Lynne  06:18  That was an interesting story if you want to hear it.

GT  06:20  We haven’t gone into the Paul Dunn story.

Lynne  06:21  Yeah, we don’t need to.

GT  06:22  This is great. We do tangents here.

Lynne  06:24  But we can.

GT  06:26  Give them a little taste of Paul Dunn. I really want to get Lynn Packer, because he’s written a book on Paul Dunn.

Lynne  06:30  Oh, okay. So [here is] what happened. I think Lynn was part of this. I don’t know how much I knew Lynn. But I knew of him because we were doing all this stuff. So, we had begun to understand (Daniel in particular) that a lot of the stories Paul Dunn was telling were not true.

GT  06:47  And Paul Dunn was a former general authority.

Lynne  06:48  Yeah, he was a general authority. And he was the folksy general authority that everybody loved.

GT  06:52  He was a wonderful speaker.

Lynne  06:54  {He had] great stories. He talked about being in a foxhole and holding his best friend while he died.

GT  07:01  And he was a minor league baseball player.

Lynne  07:02  And he was a minor league baseball player. So we found out the name of his best friend who died. Daniel found him and said, “Do you know Paul Dunn?” And he said, “Yes.” And he said, “Were you in a foxhole with him?”

Lynne  07:14  And he said, “That never happened.”

GT  07:17  “And you’re still alive.”

Lynne  07:18  Yeah, “You’re still alive.” And I remember the story. If I can remember it correctly. Dan was at the Church Office Building. He was in an elevator with Paul Dunn and said to Paul, “Look. We know this is going on.” Paul was doing a lot of business bad stuff, too. But he said, “We know this is happening.”

Lynne  07:33  And Paul Dunn basically said, “Well, it was wasn’t an actual story. It was a metaphor kind of thing.”

Lynne  07:39  And Dan was like, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” So, all of that was going on. I mean, it was an interesting time with Hofmann, and then Packer, I mean, Dunn. And then, Packer being so angry and mean and going after anybody that didn’t agree with him.

GT  07:55  Boyd Packer.

Lynne  07:56  Yeah. Boyd.

GT  07:56  Yeah. I think Lynn Packer and Boyd [are related.] Boyd is Lynn’s uncle, I believe.

Lynne  08:01  I think so, too. Yeah. So, all that was going on. And I remember Dan would keep trying to get Paul Dunn a chance. “Look. Why don’t you come clean? And then we won’t have to do this.” But he didn’t. And then I can’t remember who broke the story. It might have been Sunstone. But it was so long ago.

GT  08:19  It was probably Lynn Packer.

Lynne  08:20  But he was talking to us. There was some kind of connection. And it came out. But Dan tried to give Paul an opportunity to come clean. Yeah. And then they made him emeritus instead of doing anything else.

GT  08:34  They retired him.

Lynne  08:35  Yeah, they retired him. You’d lied. Go away.

GT  08:40  Wow, you had quite the experiences there with Sunstone.

Lynne  08:43  Oh, it’s really [great.] It was really fun and exciting. I loved going to work. It was really great. Yeah.

GT  08:50  Was that like a full time job for you?

Lynne  08:52  It was full time, really, in the summer. But there was a lot of work before: preparation, getting papers, sending out the call, deciding which papers we wanted to do, and then doing all the stuff. Because at that time, we had maybe 1000 people coming, and we had several hundred concurrent sessions. I mean, it was a really interesting time because everyone wanted to be part of it. And then we would always bring in some sort of big name, outside of Mormonism, religious scholar. Those were fun, too. We brought in some really great guys and women, and it was fun to meet them and hang out with them.

GT  09:32  They still do that, too, today.

Lynne  09:33  They do. I don’t know what they do today. But at the time, that was part of the real fun for me was meeting some of those people.

GT  09:42  Can you think of any big names?

Lynne  09:43  Well, Hubert Cousins was one. I don’t know if you know who he is. And then, I’m getting old. I can’t remember his name.  He’s a big Jungian guy now. Thomas. I have to think about it. I mean, we tried to get Elaine Pagels. I remember that I actually talked to her.

GT  10:03  I would love to get Elaine Pagels on.

Lynne  10:04  But she had had some kind of tragedy in her life and we couldn’t get her. I’d have to go back and look, but we had pretty wonderful scholars coming and chatting. And then we’d go out to dinner.  Anne and Barry Ulyanov, who were very big union, they were authors out of the New York Theological Union School, stuff like that, which was up right up my alley, stuff I was really interested in.

GT  10:27  John Dominic Crossan was there just a couple of years. Do you know John?

Lynne  10:29  Oh really? I just know the name.

GT  10:31  Yeah, he’s fantastic.

Lynne  10:32  But, it was fun, because I got to help choose. This is what I’m interested in. Let’s get these people. So yeah, it was great.

GT  10:40  Very cool. Yeah. I didn’t realize you were the head of Sunstone.

Lynne  10:43  You keep saying that, but I don’t want that out there that I was…

GT  10:47  The symposium is everything, now, it seems like.

Lynne  10:49  Really, I chaired it. But to be really clear, Elbert and Dan were [in charge.] We were just always in meetings together and figuring out things together. But I got to bring in a lot of women’s study stuff at the time. When I started chairing it, I was also really understanding feminism and that sort of thing. So, I was bringing in people talking about feminism, at least, almost every concurrent session, there was a session on women. There was also a session on being gay in Mormonism, and oftentimes, sessions about the temple. So, that stuff started coming in, it became really fun, but controversial.

GT  11:28  Well, and the temple stuff led to a statement against symposia. Was that during your tenure or right after?

Lynne  11:34  It was during–well, right after, I can’t remember if it was when we got kicked out or right before. But, right around then, they put out a statement that people at BYU couldn’t speak at the symposium anymore.

GT  11:48  Okay.

Lynne  11:49  Because of Packer, because Packers wrote that…

GT  11:53  Boyd Packer.

Lynne  11:54  Boyd, he gave that talk that said that there were three evils facing the Church, feminists, intellectuals and homosexuals. And that’s part of the reason that was that for me, for him, the last straw, because I was on television. And they asked me what I thought about that. And I said, “Well, if Boyd would get a relationship with Jesus Christ, we might get a Christ-like talk out of him.” And then the next day, I got a letter for my court.

GT  12:19  For your court.

Lynne  12:19  Yeah, I was on Chris Vanocur’s Sunday morning show or something.

GT  12:22  So, this is 1993.

Lynne  12:24  Yes, 1993.

GT  12:26  Was it August, September, when you got that letter?

Lynne  12:28  I got the letter in August, because it was during the symposium that I gave that talk, that I gave that interview. And because I was also the president of Mormon Women’s Forum at that time, which was the feminist group in town. Right. So I was doing that. And I was also the chair of the BH Roberts society. So, I was kind of doing all three of those at the time. So that’s why I was invited to go on that, to get on that talk show.

GT  12:58  And so the key issue was the interview. It wasn’t some of your writings?

Lynne  14:15  They don’t like that.

Lynne  14:24  Oh, yeah.

GT  14:26  So, do you know who was involved in yours?

Lynne  14:27  Oh, Packer. Here’s what happened after. So, do you want to hear what led up to it?

GT  14:31  Yeah.

Lynne  14:36  The whole story is really interesting. So, I wasn’t feeling really comfortable in my ward, at this point.

GT  14:44  Because you were so outspoken?

GT  16:10  This is at BYU?

Lynne  16:11  No, this is up here in Salt Lake in 1993, in May of 1993. And I started. I couldn’t. I just started laughing. And I was just like, you guys, you’ve got to give me a minute. I thought you called me in here because you cared about me. And then something switched. They all kind of were like, like, oh, and so we have this lovely conversation. It was really lovely. And I remember the bishop saying, “I’m going to tell Elder Dunn that you’re fine. You’re a lovely person.” And so that happened. And so = then in September, I mean, in August, when I did that talk, I went and I called him Boyd and said, What I felt about that if he would have a relationship with Jesus, we might have a grace, like, talk out of him. I got that letter. And so when I was when my church had my court happened, I was the first and I was disfellowshipped. And two weeks later, the first and second counselors’ wives came over to me and said, “We need to tell you something. They those guys, the bishop and his counselors, were getting so much pressure from Packer to excommunicate you, and they couldn’t, because they liked you too much. And that is why you were disfellowshipped. They were they actually were told to excommunicate you.” So it was an interesting experience for me. And I was like, so packer and Dunn were sort of in they were, they were doing stuff together. And they just were after anyone that they didn’t feel like, I don’t know, understood obedience, or authority or something. Yeah.

GT  17:49  Okay. And so Loren Dunn and Boyd Packer were deeply involved. And then you were the first. So did that affect your church attendance?

Lynne  18:03  Oh, yeah. I mean, yes.

GT  18:07  Why would you come? Because the interesting thing is, I’ve talked to Janice Allred and I know Lavina Anderson, for 30 years have continued to go to church every week, not so with Margaret and Paul. I don’t think you go to church.

Lynne  18:22  No.

GT  18:22  So, tell us more about that.

Lynne  18:23  I’ll tell you a little bit about that. So, I was just disfellowshipped. And I got a letter from them saying, from the stake president, or the bishop or something saying [that] these were the things that I had to do to get back in the Church. I couldn’t speak in church. I couldn’t teach. I could wear my garments. I could pay tithing. But I had to be really quiet. And I couldn’t speak ill of the Lord’s anointed, that kind of thing. But they had said they had followed the handbook, which is really interesting, because the handbook said, at the time, that if you’re going to do this, you’re going to take a church action, you have to meet with someone a few times before. So, I wrote back and said, “You guys didn’t follow the handbook, first of all.” And I got a letter back saying, “Well, actually, the bishop did. He met with you two times. One, that one in May, and the other was at my church court.” So I thought that was really interesting. So they wrote me this letter and I wrote them back and said, “Just so you know, I have absolutely no intention of following your admonitions. I’m not going to stop speaking out. I’m not going to do that.”

GT  19:31  So, they didn’t want you, not just to speak at church, but [not] to speak at Sunstone or anything like that.

Lynne  19:35  Yeah, that would have been the thing and I was like, nah. That’s not my way. So, I just started doing something else, which is what I talked about in that talk that I gave it. But that’s what I said.  They told me to go find something else to do and I did.

GT  19:50  {Chuckling}  So, you’ve continued to speak out. I know Janice, they put her on probation, and she said it was, even though it was probation, it was the same as disfellowshipment.

Lynne  20:05  Oh, yeah.

GT  20:06  And then they went after her about a year later, but they’ve never gone after you.  Why do you think that is?

Lynne  20:13  Well, partly because when I left, I was like, you guys go do your thing. That’s fine. I really went down a different path. I wrote him a letter. I wrote him a letter two years after, I sent it to whoever was the president of the Church at the time. And it was a letter of apology actually just saying [that] I just wanted to apologize to you because…”  I had read a book and it had said when there’s been a lot of energy around, you might want to clean it up. So, this had seemed like a bigger thing than I thought it was going to be. The September 6 got really big in a way that I did not expect. So, I wrote him a letter, and I just said, “I am so sorry, because I was so angry, you couldn’t have heard what I was saying. So, please forgive me for that. And also, please forgive me, because I was asking you to give me something that I already had, which is power as a woman. So please forgive me.” So I sent that letter. And then they sent a letter back saying, “Come back to the Church.” And I just thought, yeah, right. And then I thought about it for a while. And I thought, you know, maybe I would want to get back into the Church, and then leave quietly, because I was I was done. But there was this energetic thing out there. And so I went to my bishop, and I told him what I was doing and the work I was doing and how I was being, my life, and he actually said, “You know, I think the Church could use someone like you, but I have talked to the General Authorities, I’ll get back with you. I would love for you to come back.” And then I never heard from again, so that wasn’t ever going to happen. And that was that was it for me right there.

GT  21:49  Well, because I’m interested to hear more of your background. I think convert to the Church looks at the Church a lot differently than a lifelong member.

Lynne  21:59  So differently, yeah.

GT  22:00  And it’s interesting, because Margaret and Janice are lifelong members of the Church. Paul, on the other hand, is still a believer, and a convert. And so, you said you have Italian ancestry?

Lynne  22:13  Yeah.

GT  22:14  That’s why you get along so well with Paul?

Lynne  22:15  Well, we, yeah, I think maybe. But I just, I adore all [of them,] Margaret, Paul, Janice. Paul, he’s got that Italian humor and it’s great. It’s really great.

GT  22:27  I love Paul, too.

GT  00:25  So let’s, go back and talk about you growing up. So, you grew up Italian Catholic or?

Lynne  00:30  No, actually, my grandmother’s from Italy. My grandfather was from Germany. And my mom grew up with basically immigrants. My grandmother, I think, was either pregnant, or she was born here. But she spoke only Italian until she was in eighth grade. So I grew up with those people. They were my grandparents, I hung out with them. So. My grandmother made really just one, what’s the word, concession to my grandfather. She became a Lutheran and let go of Catholicism. So, I was raised Lutheran, actually. And it’s a long story, but my parents moved a lot when I was kid. I moved in 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. And at some point, I didn’t want to do that anymore. And I started investigating the Mormon Church. And I thought that there was something about it that felt stable, to me, I think, at 17. And they were totally against me becoming Mormon, completely, because they just thought it was the weirdest church. And so, I started investigating, and I’ve got to also say the missionaries were very cute, and I was 17. {Rick laughing} So I was in Florida, and then they moved back up to Pennsylvania. I went from Pennsylvania to Florida a bunch of times. So, they moved back to Pennsylvania, and that’s where I became a Mormon. I was baptized in New Jersey. And then my parents went to my baptism, and two months later, they became Mormon.

GT  01:54  Oh, wow.

Lynne  01:55  And then all of my Italian family became Mormon.

GT  01:58  No way!

Lynne  01:58  Yeah, I don’t know. There’s like [about] 30 of them that [joined:] my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my brother.

GT  02:03  Is that because of you?

Lynne  02:05  I wasn’t. It was my parents [who] were going around doing it all. I was at BYU by this point.

GT  02:10  Okay.

Lynne  02:10  So everybody just became Mormon.

GT  02:14  Wow.

Lynne  02:15  Like, maybe 20, something like that, became Mormon. That changed everything, too. Because by this time I was at BYU. At BYU, I was becoming a little clearer, because the Church in Pennsylvania is very different.

GT  02:30  Very different.

Lynne  02:31  Yeah. And then I went to BYU.

GT  02:31  Okay. {chuckling}

Lynne  02:31  Than the Church in Provo, Utah. And I remember thinking, “Oh, man, this is–now all these people are joining. What am I going to do?” Like, this is not the way they said, they didn’t– when I joined, they didn’t talk about racism. They didn’t talk about misogyny. They didn’t talk about–they didn’t talk about much, really. They just like, “Come in. It’s this lovely family thing.” So, when you’re 17, you’re not investigating too much because the missionaries are cute. So that’s how I got into the Church. So, I went to BYU.

GT  02:42  So you went to BYU. You were kind of a fish out of water at BYU?

Lynne  03:06  Totally a fish out of water.

GT  03:08  Okay.

Lynne  03:08  My second year at BYU, I got called in and they said, “We think another university might be better for you.” I think it may have been because I was hitchhiking to church, and I was wearing–it just wasn’t a match. It just wasn’t a match. And I realized it wasn’t. So that’s what happened.

GT  03:25  You were hitchhiking. Don’t you just go to your classes to go to church?

Lynne  03:29  No, actually, because the wards were all over the place back in ’70’s. I mean, they were all over Provo. But, anyway, the whole thing is they said [that] we think another university would be better for you.

GT  03:40  You should have come down the road to Utah Tech at the time, right?

Lynne  03:42  Yeah, I should have, right? I don’t even know if it was there, or gone up to the U of U.  So that started my entrance into being a Mormon in the Wasatch Front.

GT  03:52  But, still did you graduate from BYU?

Lynne  03:55  No, I never did graduate. I didn’t. I started working.  Part of it is, I grew up pretty poor, and there was not a lot of money. So, I started working. And when I started working, I had to work and then I just didn’t go to school, I was paying for my life. And then got married when I was 26, because I continued to work. And then I actually put him through med school, and then I went back to school right after I stopped working for Sunstone. And I was in school for a couple of years. I loved it, I was doing really well. But then I got kicked out of the Church.  Getting kicked out of the Church created a whole, like talks, like there’s a whole bunch of stuff that went along with being kicked out of the Church as a part of the September Six. I was doing newspaper stuff and talks and all of that and then my marriage fell apart. And then I just didn’t go back to school. And then I opened up a practice. I’m a life coach. I have read a lot of stuff around the psyche and Jung and Freud. From the time I was 17, I had spent a lot of time really investigating the way the mind works. And then, in 1990, let’s see. It was 1993 when I got kicked out, I found a fantastic therapist who saw something in me, and I started attending a group that teaches people how to do a particular kind of counseling. So in the group, there are therapists and psychiatrists and psychologists. We’ve been in that group for 23 years, every Thursday night, and he helped me open a practice and now I’m a life coach.

GT  05:36  Okay, so did you, for lack of a better word, did you lose your testimony in 1993, when they kicked you out?

Lynne  05:48  No, by 1993, I think I was a little more aware of things, like that the Church actually believed that God lived on a planet next to Kolob, and had body parts and passions in a way that I hadn’t understood before. But mostly the misogyny and the homophobia and the racism, to me, that was like, I couldn’t understand why everybody wasn’t up in arms with Packer giving that talk, for instance, like he was saying, “We are misogynists.” He was saying, “We are homophobic.” He was saying, “We are anti-intellectual.”

GT  06:27  In 1993, that would have been pretty common for most of the United States to be homophobic, though. Wouldn’t it?

Lynne  06:33  But don’t say that you’re a church that [loves.] Don’t say that this is a church that isn’t about love. Because that’s not about love. I don’t give a crap what everybody was saying at the time.

GT  06:45  I’m trying to remember the political situation, it seems like that was when they passed the Defense of Marriage Act in the US Congress.

Lynne  06:56  But also the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) didn’t pass.

GT  06:58  Well, that was back in the 70’s.

Lynne  07:00  But that was also the misogyny part.

GT  07:03  Okay.

Lynne  07:03  That which, by the way, the Church did everything it could to not pass that, ERA.

GT  07:07  Right.

Lynne  07:07  And then the marriage defense…

GT  07:09  So there’s a lot, it seems like we’re condensing a lot of stuff. So you’ve got the ERA.

Lynne  07:14  You’re asking me why what helped me…

GT  07:15  That was in 1976, roughly.

Lynne  07:17  [It was] 1978 .

GT  07:17  So, in 1978, the Church puts a big push to shut down the Equal Rights Amendment.

Lynne  07:25  To keep women in their place.

GT  07:27  Keep women in their place, as you say. And so I mean, 1978, it sounds like you joined the Church, probably, in 1970 or so?

Lynne  07:36  [In] 1970.

GT  07:38  Oh, in 1970. So you probably recognized the racism between 70 and 78.

Lynne  07:45  Yeah, well, here’s what’s interesting. I left and went to BYU. At BYU, there was no color.

GT  07:52  Right.

Lynne  07:53  So, it didn’t really hit me…

GT  07:55  Right.

Lynne  07:55  …until a little while later, when I started really reading stuff and understanding. To me, let me just say this, let me think, so that I can be clear. To say; “Wasn’t that the way the world was, anyway?” To me, is the Church, is it really a part of the world? It’s the old, is it a hospital or is it a social club? And the fact that the Church that touts itself as Jesus is the head of the Church, and it’s all love and that and then to have one of the authorities actually blatantly say that. Not just that, but when I was reading the John Birchers, all of that stuff, too. All of a sudden, it was like, this is not the church I thought it was. This church is not this loving, kind, wonderful church. It’s as big of a mess as the rest of the world. And I know that’s a little naive to think that it wouldn’t be, but it woke me up.

GT  08:51  Okay.

Lynne  08:51  And I was like, I’m going to go find something else, because I don’t want to be part of that.

GT  08:57  So can you talk about your feelings of June 1978 when the revelation came to allow blacks to have the priesthood? Was that a good day? Was that a bad day?

Lynne  09:06  Well, it was a great day. I mean, don’t get me wrong. But what I found out from Mike Quinn, was that it was at the same time when they were doing temples in Brazil, and no one knew who was black or white. And so, they didn’t know what to do. And so, this revelation came. And so do I believe it was a revelation? Probably not. I think it was convenient. And they had to do that. The Church is a growing church. It’s a proselytizing church. So, it was too convenient.

GT  09:41  When you say too convenient, were those your thoughts in ’78? Or did that come later?

Lynne  09:48  Well, in 1978, I wondered. That’s an interesting thing that now this is coming out?

Lynne  10:01  Yeah.

GT  10:43  Kimball.

Lynne  10:43  So, I mean, I just, I don’t have a lot of faith in them. I guess that’s the bottom line, you know? Well, the fact that, that was even a question, that they were hard liners about race in this church. It just doesn’t work in the way that I see the world. It just doesn’t work. Like, why wouldn’t whoever was the President of the Church or the Prophet of the Church say, “This is ridiculous. We’re not going to do this. This is not okay.”

GT  11:13  Okay.

Lynne  11:14  And, I mean, it’s still a problem.

GT  11:18  So, because we’ve also got the Equal Rights Amendment. President Kimball was against that. Did you know Sonia Johnson?

Lynne  11:27  No, but I was influenced by Sonia Johnson. I gave a talk at Sunstone saying, “We’re standing on her shoulders, as feminists, and she was standing on other feminists. We all stand on each other’s shoulders.” She was a real wake up for a lot of us. That was a wake up. Do you want to know what the actually big wake up was, although Sonia was part of it.  But it was, who was it? I think it was, it wasn’t Kimball. It was in the ’80s, whoever was the President of the Church might have been…

GT  12:00  Benson.

Lynne  12:01  Benson gave a talk. And he quoted Kimball, I think, saying; “Women come home from the typewriter. Come home from the office. Come home and make beds and clean house for your family. Because that’s what you’re here to do”. And for a ton of us, that’s how Mormon Women’s Forum got formed, out of that talk.

GT  12:25  Oh.

Lynne  12:26  Because everyone watched it. And we’re like, wow. That’s actually the way you see women. That’s what this church sees for women. But it was also, like, don’t come home from the attorney’s office or anything, but come home from the typewriter. Come home from the– as if women were here just to serve. And I think that was—it’s a culmination of things. I think it builds on things.

GT  12:26  Because what I’m hearing is, so late ’70s, early ’80s, the priesthood ban was removed, which was good. You were like, why did it exist in the first place?

Lynne  13:03  Yeah.

GT  13:03  ERA’s going and you’re like, women’s rights, I believe in that. It sounds like you were ahead of the nation, I’ll say, as far as gay rights. Because,= Defensive Marriage Act was early ’90s. Bill Clinton, I remember signed that into law. And so we’ve got this bubbling up of– Elder Packer would say the three threats of the Church, gays, intellectuals, and feminists.

Lynne  13:32  Yeah, feminism, intellectuals and homosexuals, which is an interesting thing to say.

GT  13:38  And so those were causing you a lot of personal anguish, I guess, with the Church?

Lynne  13:44  Well, partly with the Church. You know what, also, women weren’t giving prayers in sacrament [meeting] until ’78. They had taken a lot. There was one other thing that happened, too, which I think is okay to talk about now. So, at the time, I’m trying to remember who was the Relief Society President in the Church? Chieko was one of the counselors and there was Aileen Clyde who was a counselor and…

GT  14:12  Sherry Dew?

Lynne  14:12  No,  Jack?

GT  14:14  Elaine Jack.

Lynne  14:14  Elaine Jack, yeah. So we had a Mormon Women’s Forum meeting at my house, and Aileen Clyde came to that meeting, and said, this to us. This is when everybody was waking up. She said, they’d been in the Relief Society presidency for like three or four years or something. And Mrs. America, who was a Mormon had just met with whoever the Prophet was, which was…

GT  14:42  Miss America?

Lynne  14:42  Mrs. America.

GT  14:43  Ah, Mrs America.

Lynne  14:44  [She] met with, was it Hinckley at that time? Maybe Hinckley or Benson, Hinckley one of them.

GT  14:48  In the 80’s it would have either been Kimball or Benson.

Lynne  14:49  No, no Kimball, Kimball was gone.

GT  14:51  So Benson?

Lynne  14:52  It was the ’90s.

GT  14:54   Oh.

Lynne  14:54  It was the 90’s.

GT  14:56  That would have been after Benson was Hunter.

Lynne  14:59  Yeah, but he didn’t last long. It was Hinckley, I think.

GT  15:01  Hinckley, okay.

Lynne  15:03  I’m not sure, but whoever it was, she said “Mrs. America had just met with the Prophet. How often do you think the Relief Society President has met with this prophet? We’ve been in there for five years or something?” We said once a year? She said, “Zero!”

GT  15:19  Really?

Lynne  15:20  She said, we don’t get to do that. We don’t get to meet with him. In fact, they had been set aside, you know, the things when they set people aside.

GT  15:32  Do you mean set apart?

Lynne  15:36  Yeah, set apart, set aside, whatever. But and I’m telling the story, but it was so long ago, I don’t think it’ll matter. Because those guys aren’t even around anymore. But they had been set apart as being in charge of all the women. And then whoever did that went out and another General Authority came in and said, “That was the wrong setting apart.” And he set them apart to be only over them. So that in the past, if there was a problem in Ohio, the women could decide they could go do that. But now, if there was a woman in Ohio, who are having a problem, they had to go to the general authority and go through them in order to go out there. So they had lost a lot of their power.

GT  16:18  The Relief Society.

Lynne  16:19  The Relief Society. And so, this was also really interesting for us. And I know that what they were hoping, because they were really wonderful women, Aileen and Chieko are wonderful women. I mean Chieko just said, “Hey, these people at Sunstone are just like, kids in the program for smart kids. Why don’t you just leave them alone?” But I think they we’re hoping that we would push the envelope out a little bit for them. So, they had some movement. In fact, the day of my court, I got a call from Aileen Clyde saying, “Please don’t get excommunicated. We need you guys to do this thing. We want you to move out the envelope, so we have more room to move.”

GT  17:04  This is Aileen Clyde?

Lynne  17:06  Clyde.

GT  17:07  From the Relief Society General presidency?

Lynne  17:09  Yes. And I also got a call from Connie Chung’s people asking me if I would take in a hidden camera, which I said no. Because remember, Connie Chung had a news report thing at that time. She had called me the same day.

GT  17:22  Oh, wow. She was CBS news.

Lynne  17:25  Yeah, she was CBS News. It was interesting. But I said no. But it was interesting, because I could tell how much they love the women of the Church, these women. Every power was getting taken away from them. And so that was coming into us, too. We understood that Mormon Women’s Forum was becoming more and more aware of the limits of what was happening and taking away instead of giving women more and more room to actually be who they are. So that pushed us on, as well.

GT  18:02  Okay. So I think I get a better sense of the things that were bothering you from probably the late ’70s, because it sounds so when you’re first baptized, you came in. You didn’t know anything. And then I mean, when did you first notice that racism or sexism was a problem?  Was it ’78 when the Church  announced the rescission of the ban and they were against ERA?

Lynne  18:32  Well, let me also say this. When I became a Mormon, I was 17 when I was investigating, 18 when I joined, I looked very young. And so I went for my interviews, and no one asked me any sexual questions, at all. None.

GT  18:49  Well, those aren’t typical baptism questions.

Lynne  18:53  Yeah, they are. Have you had sex?

GT  18:55  Oh, do you obey the law of chastity, I guess, yeah.

Lynne  18:58  Yeah, not a word.

GT  18:59  Really?

Lynne  18:59  Not a word. So when I went in for my patriarchal blessing, my bishop asked me those questions. And I looked at him and I said, “I think you’re a lecherous old man. This is none of your business.”  And he did not know, he said, “No one’s asked you these questions?” And I said, “No!” So, I came in not knowing a lot of this stuff.

GT  19:18  Okay.

Lynne  19:19  So it was really like shock after shock. I was like; “Really? You think that’s your business? That is really weird.” So I was reeling from that, as well, just kind of like, okay, this is really different. The race thing, I’ve always been aware of race issues. But because I was in Provo and there were no people of color at all, really…

GT  19:46  They didn’t even have any on the football team back then.

Lynne  19:47  I don’t think so. Nobody was. It didn’t sink into my consciousness until probably, maybe a couple of years before, understanding wait a minute. There’s a ban? You can’t even have a drop of blood and be Mormon, a drop of blood that they consider black.

GT  20:08  Well, we would baptize them. We just wouldn’t give him the priesthood.

Lynne  20:10  But, you couldn’t go to the temple.

GT  20:11  Right.

Lynne  20:12  Yeah, you couldn’t do anything. It was ridiculous. It was just ridiculous. And so that stuff was really bubbling up to me as well. I’d spent my childhood reading about, well, reading about everything that I could possibly read, beginning with the Holocaust, and then racism and then the Native Americans and understanding the problems. And for some reason, I don’t know why. But because of the way the Church presented itself, I thought it was a different, I thought it’d be different. So it shocked me, just a little bit, that it wasn’t. And that’s how it started.

GT  20:45  Okay. So, you’re wrestling in the ’80s with feminism, racism, even gay rights?

Lynne  20:52  Even gay rights. Because I had a lot of gay friends by then.

GT  20:54  Okay.

Lynne  20:55  It’s BYU. I have a lot of gay friends, even back then. So yeah, I had gay friends. I had gay friends who killed themselves, actually, because of the Church and the standard. So, all that stuff was, it was pretty tumultuous time with racism and misogyny and homophobia. All of that was part of what we were doing at Sunstone, trying to raise the consciousness of how do we do this? And at that point, I really was hopeful that the Church would want to shift the way it was responding to people. And so, when we were doing it, and we were having all these sessions, I kind of thought, well, this is great. This is kind of working, right? This is, people are coming, we’re talking about it, all of that. And then they went after anybody who was a professor at BYU, which was trying to shut down Sunstone.

GT  21:51  Yeah. Which they never did. {chuckling}

Lynne  21:53  Which they never did, but they tried.

GT  21:57  So, they told the BYU professors, “You can’t go to Sunstone anymore.”

Lynne  22:00  Well, who got also kicked out? Cecilia.

GT  22:05  Farr?

Lynne  22:05  Cecilia Farr and David Knowlton. Right after us, they were also kicked out of BYU. There’s a lot of stuff. It was almost like a it was a purge. It was a purge going after anyone who wasn’t really towing the line.

GT  22:20  Okay.

Lynne  22:20  Yeah. And that was also–we were, I was shocked. First of all, we were stay at home moms, a lot of us. So, I couldn’t figure out what they were so all worked up about. We were just doing stuff. Right? I was raising kids and putting people through, through his residency and all that stuff. And what was the big deal? But apparently, it was a big deal.

GT  22:47  And so basically, when your church court happened, did you attend?

Lynne  22:52  Oh, yeah.

GT  22:52  Okay, so you attended, met in the bishops office, he said…

Lynne  22:55  No, because I was the first. I didn’t know what, nobody knew what was happening. I was the first.

GT  23:01  You were the first one.

Lynne  23:02  Yes.

GT  23:03  And so then the dominoes started falling after you.

Lynne  23:05  Yeah. Here’s what’s really funny. So, I go to the church. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. A couple hundred people [are] singing hymns outside with signs that say” Lynne is not a heretic.” First of all, that was an interesting moment. And then two of my witnesses, Margaret and Lavina were witnesses.

GT  23:23  Margaret Toscano?

Lynne  23:24  Margaret Toscano and Lavina were my witnesses.

GT  23:25  Uh-oh! {chuckling}

Lynne  23:26  These people who I adore beyond belief, right? But then they’re in there, too. So, the here’s the people who are standing up for me. It was just after, when everybody [got disciplined,] when it started happening. [It] was just amusing. Like, well, there you go. There you go. {Rick laughing} That’s not going to hold any water. But I was so happy that they did it. We had, like, five witnesses. My father at one point looked at the bishop and said, “If you excommunicate my daughter,” because he was a very big Mormon believer by that time. But anyway, so when I look back and see that, it’s pretty funny.

GT  24:04  Ok, so you had the church court. The bishop didn’t have the heard to excommunicate you so they disfellowshipped you.

Lynne  24:12  Disfellowshipped me, yeah.

GT  24:13  But at that point, you were like, if you don’t like me, I don’t like you. I’m done with this?

Lynne  24:25  Well, other things happened. Things began happening. Part of it was I found this amazing therapist, and I started really working with that, and then my marriage fell apart.

GT  24:37  Was because of your excommunication? Well you weren’t excommunicated, but because of the punishment?

Lynne  24:41  I think it was more because we got married after knowing each other for months, and had three kids really fast and went to med school. And then, all of that was really, when you look at that, we were in our twenties. We were stupid, putting so much on your plate. That’s part of it. He was an introvert and that was a pretty extroverted experience. And so I think that was difficult for him because the phone was ringing constantly and I was running the symposium.  There were always people at our house.  So, yeah, it was partly that. But you can’t blame it. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ever blame it just on that. It was the perfect storm of: this is what’s going to happen. So when that fell apart, I was supposed to have alimony till I was 65. But he got Parkinson’s a few years after we got a divorce. And so I ended up not having alimony and I had to figure out a way to financially take care of myself.  And I have a natural gift of working with people. And so, I started a practice and that’s what happened.

GT  00:34  Well, that’s what I want to get into a little bit, because it sounds very interesting to me. So, a few years later, it sounds like you sent a letter where you were forgiving. You’re asking for forgiveness because of your own anger. But you had no intention, really, of coming back.

Lynne  00:54  I wasn’t coming back. I never said I was coming back. That wasn’t the point of that letter.

GT  00:59  Okay.

Lynne  01:00  The point of that letter was: I see that I was asking you to hear me and you couldn’t, because it’s hard to hear someone who’s really pissed about the way things are. Not that it’s a problem to be pissed, but I was pretty pissed. I was saying things, like, I can do sound bites, and that was part of the problem. I was doing talk shows and that kind of stuff. But the other thing is, I really wanted to say, “You can’t give me what I already have. And that is my own authority, my own power as a human being, as a woman. And I was somehow asking you for that.” So, I began to realize that, because I wanted their approval, I was dancing around the patriarchy, instead of going to do something that I really wanted to do. And so when I realized that, I sent them that letter, and then I moved into the direction. I was already in the direction of going in that direction where I am now, because of things that had shown up in my life and the work that I do that has a lot to do with going to Peru, and some of the stuff that I talked about in my talk at Sunstone. But, no, I was never [coming back.] I never even had a moment of thinking of coming back when that happened.

GT  02:15  Okay, so was this was, for lack of a better word, a way to get forgiveness with the Church, where you were forgiving the Church?

Lynne  02:28  Yeah.

GT  02:28  So this is your own personal forgiveness.

Lynne  02:30  Absolutely. The only reason to do forgiveness is for yourself really. Tight? To let yourself off the hook; I really wanted to let all that go. I have come to this conclusion: The Church is doing exactly what it needs to do. Well, whatever that is, for me, was the perfect amount of patriarchal authority that I needed to find myself and to go, okay. I don’t believe that. That is not good for the world. Patriarchy, in my opinion, is what is crushing the world at this point. And so, I don’t want that. I want something else. And so that sent me on my way. And without the Church, I don’t think I would have become who I am, really.

GT  03:13  So do you regret being baptized? Or was that just part of your journey?

Lynne  03:17  Nope, I actually think every single step was exactly what I needed.

GT  03:23  Okay. And so, as you’re looking at this, you basically forgave the Church, and then said, I’m moving in this other direction. Can you talk about your spirituality now? Because it sounds like you’ve just got a different kind of spirituality.

GT  03:40  [No]

Lynne  03:40  So anyway, it’s been a really interesting thing, although I don’t like the way the culture is taking in psychedelics right now. But 30 years ago, I was introduced to them right after I got kicked out of the Church, and I started doing ceremonies with people and feeling more connected to the earth and to myself and understanding what it means to be human in a different way than through Mormonism, or Christianity really. [It is] just a whole different way of feeling connected to what I call the divine and I am nuts about The Creator and what that energy is that created the universe and all it contains. And so, I’ve had a lot of experiences working out, especially in Peru, working with medicine people and medicine work, to understand what my connection is, and how my belief–not even belief, my feelings of being completely connected to a loving God that is so nuts about all of us that it just keeps loving and loving and loving. And it doesn’t matter if you’re Mormon or not Mormon, but your path is going to take you, life will take you somewhere. And it’s the most interesting, amazing ride that I could have ever imagined. Does that make sense?

GT  05:48  Could you characterize it as new age religion?

Lynne  05:52  No, no, no, no. I work with people who have been working–their lineage is thousands of years old.

GT  05:57  Is it more like Native American religion?

Lynne  05:59  South American, more South American.

GT  06:02  South American.

Lynne  06:00  There’s more than just South America. I can talk about that, because it’s out of the country. I work with a woman down there, that is phenomenal. And she does ceremonies. And so, I take groups twice a year to her place. And we stay for two weeks. And what happens when you’re there is you have this connection with stuff about yourself that you need to connect to. But also, you can see this Garden of Eden that she’s created out of a deforested place, through just the information that gets downloaded when you do this sort of stuff, and the connection she has to the Creator that we all have really. I don’t know how else to say this. But it is this beautiful experience of knowing that you’re loved and that everything, everyone is loved. And everyone’s doing the best they know how. Being human is very difficult. It’s very difficult. And we have a lot of stuff passed down to us. I talked about this in that [Sunstone] talk. But also, we have a lot of limiting beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation: racism, homophobia, misogyny, all those things have been passed down. And so it’s not like you can get angry at the people who pass down. I’m really not. But you understand that all of those are out of fear. And that fear has kept people from really connecting. And the work that I do with medicine work connects you back into the real person, the real essence of who we really are. And that has been priceless to me.

GT  07:43  You said medicine work. And that sounds [Native American.] We always hear about the medicine man. It’s kind of a Native American [leader.]

Lynne  07:48  Yeah.

GT  07:49  Are you kind of a shaman?

Lynne  07:50  Oh, no, no, no, no, no. But I work with this woman down in Peru. She would never call herself a shaman either. She’s an Ayahuasca. But she holds this place for people to come and heal. And it’s the most healing. Not everybody should do it by the way. This is not like, oh, everyone should go out and do any of Ayahuasca or peyote or any of those things. But for people that it works for, it is a beautiful experience and helps them to heal from the generations that they come from. Does that make sense?

GT  08:28  Okay. Yeah, it sounds very Native American.

Lynne  08:31  I know it does. I am not Native American. And I’m not South American. I’ve worked with the Huichols out of Mexico. And I’ve worked with some of the Quechua tribes, a guy out of Machu Picchu, and this woman has Quechua. But it’s not Native American. I don’t even know how to explain it. Native American is one way but it’s more than that. It’s the way of connecting and caring for the earth and loving the Earth. It’s very feminine. Let me put it that way. It’s a very feminine process, as opposed to the patriarchal process. I don’t think it should all be feminine, or all masculine by the way. I think there needs to be this marriage of both, so that there’s a balance between them. But the work with medicine work is often a very feminine connecting, to watch a mama to the earth and understanding that.